How do Different Storage Conditions Affect Max THC?

Years ago, I placed a friend’s bag of weed in direct sunlight. He quickly grabbed it and moved it into the shade, saying cannabis would go bad if it was kept in sunlight.

Having the instruments to run almost any cannabis tests we can think of at MCR Labs, we decided to test this idea.

So we set out to answer the question: How do different storage conditions alter Max THC, or the maximum theoretical THC,  in cannabis after 50 days?

First, we tested a  Blue Dream flower to get the baseline Max THC. Here are the results:
THC:  0.4%            THCa:  23.9%            Max THC: 21.3%
*Max THC = (87.7% x THCa) + THC

Then we split up the same Blue Dream flower and placed it into 4 different glass containers:
Container One was left open, and placed in the shade
Container Two was closed, and placed in the fridge
Container Three was closed, and placed on a windowsill, in direct sunlight
Container Four was closed, and placed in the shade.

After 50 days, we tested the Blue Dream flower from each container. The following graph shows the remaining Max THC in each storage condition.

The full numbers:

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Regardless of storage conditions, all flower samples lost a significant amount of Max THC. However, the flower on the windowsill lost 30% more Max THC than the flower kept in the fridge.  So there you have it.

Full cannabinoids profiles can be found here. This experiment was performed only one time, using one flower. We will continue this line of tests, and will repeat this experiment with a large sample size in the future.