Mycotoxins

So, it seems mandatory testing for mycotoxins is finally about to come into effect.

From what I understand, there’s no known way to remediate this stuff. That true?

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If you knew exactally what you were dealing with you may be able to target it with some sort of enzyme or something? just spitballing here!
@cyclopath you know anything about this magic?
Otherwise Id toss it!

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For sure the main two in question are aflatoxins and oschratoxins, there’s a few types of each.

@Photon_noir? @QGA?

I don’t have any data on enzymatic degradation, but it sounds like a great idea.

Developing the enzymology sounds like dangerous work. Feeding high doses of aflatoxins to microbes until something eats it, then figuring out how, isn’t rocket science, but those toxins are problematic at such low doses that I wouldn’t want to take it on.

I imagine there are chromatographic methods that would be effective. Just don’t know that the research has been done

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I’m not concerned about it per se, really just wondering how it’s going to affect the industry. All these people that have been cheating tests with ozone and the like aren’t going to be able to keep their current business model.

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Knew we’d gotten close…guess I should read that link?? Or was that yesterday?

So that link appears broken, but I found this…

The Phase I research study determined the feasibility and economics of extracting aflatoxins in corn using a cost competitive and environmentally benign acetone process. This approach demonstrated a 90% reduction of high concentrations of aflatoxin in naturally contaminated corn which was harvested in 2005 in the US.

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Hmmm… 90% isn’t going to cut into that 20ppb range. Unless that means some type of LLE with acetone and… ? could potentially yield something closer to what we’re after.

You saying the mycotoxins oass over in disty?

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Came from here. On my phone…

https://www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/220496

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That read to me like they just disperse it into other food in small amounts probably all the time, crazy, haha.

Yeah, they concentrate actually.

Edit: I’m hoping this means people can’t get away with growing moldy shit weed and managing to make it passable. I’m even wondering if it might kill the idea of “big cannabis” because it becomes an unmanageable problem at a certain scale.

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Ochratoxin can be all but eliminated from oil with decarbing. Aflatoxin you are stuck with. We had good luck with QWET for producing passing oils with failing material. You might be able to distill it out, but I think you’d be cutting it pretty close to the resolution of an SPD. We were going to try that as a last resort but we managed to turn out passing oils.

The only way to really control mycotoxins is to get rid of the mycos. Aspergillus flavus is a typical mycotocin-producing mold common to just about all agriculture. Your best bet is to take steps to control the grow environment so that it is really unfriendly to mold. We had really good luck remediating our grow after we encountered this problem. If you can’t control the source of the toxins you’ll never get ahead of the problem.

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The other main culprit is pennicillium, rampant in some grows in Colorado from what I understand.

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I have also concentrated down oil using cryo etho extraction that tested positive for some of these and resulted in passing test. I could track down the tests.

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I would certainly be interested in what passing but detectable looked like.

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The key component of the phrasing here is the plurality. ***toxinS.

If you don’t know what specific molecules you are trying to mitigate, there is no elegant way to mitigate them. Your best option is brute force destruction of the toxic compounds (and even that’s no guarantee you haven’t created smaller toxic molecules) or complete stripping purification of the compounds you DO want from everything else… then maybe recombining the components you have purified of all toxins, or just using untainted components after securing your desired isolates.

Weed is called weed because it grows everywhere easily like a weed. One should never feel obligated to resort to purifying and recombining all the desirable components of such a hardy and ubiquitous plant!

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Looks like the 5 that will be tested for are alfatoxin B1 and B2, aflatoxin G1 and G2, as well as oschratoxin A.

Regulatory limit in the states will be <20ppb for each.

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Interesting I was unaware that aflatoxins distill with the THC

My bosses are going to love hearing this. Their cart game is gunna be sick!

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Perhaps not all of them do, but, from what was imparted upon the crowd at the recent symposium I attended, it concentrates them 8-10X and there is no known way to remediate them currently.

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