THE ROLE OF QUALITY CONTROL AND QUALITY ASSURANCE OF DRYING PROCESS OF CANNABIS SPP. FOR MEDICINAL USE

Abstract

In the past years, the growth in the demand and production of cannabis and its products for medical purposes has extremely increased. One of the most critical post-harvest processes is the drying of both the cannabis herb and its flowers. With the help of this process, the large amount of water is removed, which can reach up to 80% in the fresh plant. By removing water, which is an excellent environment for the development of various bacteria and fungi, we protect cannabis from microbial contamination, which has a huge impact on the composition, quality, taste, smell, and also the safety of the patient's health, which is first a place for every producer. Drying is a process that requires great control of environmental conditions, such as: temperature, relative humidity, air flow, ventilation, vacuum and pressure. Industrial drying involves a large amount of heat energy, which can involve various mechanisms such as convection, conduction, radiation or a combination of these.To achieve vaporization a large amount of latent heat must be provided around the entire material. The drying mechanism consists of two periods: a period of constant rate and periods of falling rate. The period of constant rate is that period when water is removed from the surface by evaporation, and the internal movement of water allows the surface to remain saturated. The falling rate period is when the surface of the material is unsaturated and the internal water movement is less than the evaporation rate. In order to achieve a quality product intended for medical purposes, several types of drying have been perfected, namely: hot air drying, oven drying, vacuum freeze drying, atmospheric freeze drying and microwave drying. Each of these types of drying has its own advantages and disadvantages. Drying is one of the key processes in defining the composition, quality and safety of the final cannabis product. For this reason, the quality control should provide adequate representative samples in terms of the homogeneity of the dried material, to pay attention to the ambient conditions, to pay attention to the critical points, which represent a risk factor when providing the sample, to ensure adequate drying conditions in suitable dryers, with microbiological purity, are in order to obtain relevant moisture results, and thus to determine the end of the drying process. During the entire drying process, it is very important to provide adequate and well-trained personnel, who will not only perform monitoring during the entire process, but will also know the process well. In order to ensure accurate, precise, repeatable and relevant results in terms of water content, as well as the uniformity of the drying process, process validation must be done, which is one of the tasks of quality control and assurance of every manufacturer. The validation of the drying process can be defined as documented evidence that the process, operated within the established parameters, can be carried out effectively and reproducibly to produce a dry cannabis flower for medicinal purposes, which can also be used for its extraction and the production of cannabis-based preparations, which meets its predetermined specifications and quality requirements.