Pre-treatment of cannabis biomass for food grade enzymatic hydrolysis and sugar production

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The legalization of cannabis for recreation purposes in Canada has opened a large market to Canadian producers and distributors. Cannabis products based on THC, which is found predominantly in the leaves and fruits of the plant, however, cause a logistic problem through the disposal of stems, stalks and roots. The residues only contain a small proportion of active ingredients and cannot be used for THC extraction. There are currently no prescribed methods, under the Canadian Cannabis Act, for their disposal. The only provision is that the residues must be rendered inert and unusable, most generally through a complex dispersion procedure including shredding and mixing with other products. The quantity of residues is bound to increase with increasing cannabis production, and it becomes imperative to develop and implement valorisation techniques that go beyond basic composting or incineration. An innovative, value-added, alternative for the stems and roots is to further process the residues to extract cellulosic sugars to produce cannabis edible products. This project aims to develop the key biomass pre-treatment step of this process.