Listen or read the transcript below of Dr. Allison Justice’s interview with Dr. Zachary Cartwright of Water in Food. What is Water in Food? Every year, billions of dollars are spent by food manufacturers to move water in and out of food products. As a food scientist, Dr. Zachary Cartwright is on a mission to understand how this can be done better. Dr. Cartwright discusses the hemp industry, Dr. Justice's & The Hemp Mine’s current experiments, and the use of water activity measurements in hemp products.
Hosted by Zachary Cartwright, Ph.D.
Lead FOOD Scientist at METER Group
Today I’m joined by Dr. Allison Justice who is the founder of The Hemp Mine located in South Carolina. Dr. Justice has combined her scientific education from Clemson University and her experience with cannabis producers in California to supply premium hemp in her home state. The Hemp Mine is known for its transparency to its customers and sound research, and in this episode, we discuss her highly regulated industry, current experiments, and use of water activity measurements. Let’s hear what Dr. Justice has to say on Water in Food...
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is Water In Food.
Dr. Allison Justice:
My question was when is the flower dry enough to then go into the curing process? Did a little reading and of course found that water activity is that metric, even greater than the moisture content meters that some people would use.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
Today, I'm joined by Dr. Alison Justice, who is the founder of the Hemp Mine located in South Carolina. Dr. Justice has combined her scientific education from Clemson University and her experience with cannabis producers in California to supply premium hemp in her home state. The Hemp Mine is known for its transparency to its customers and sound research. And in this episode, we discuss her highly regulated industry, current experiments and use of water activity measurements. Let's hear what Dr. Justice has to say on Water In Food.
Dr. Allison Justice:
Hello. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm excited to chat with you today.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
Yeah. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and the industry that you are in?
Dr. Allison Justice:
So I am a Ph.D. plant scientist. Did my work at Clemson University. All of my work there had nothing to do with the industry that I am in now, except for it being still work with a plant. Mainly controlled our agricultural studies with ornamentals and vegetable-type crops. But now I am working with cannabis, something that at the time when I was studying was not legal or even considered by my fellow peers to potentially be a career path. But oddly, it turned out as one and now I'm the founder and owner of the Hemp Mine, which is a vertically integrated hemp company in South Carolina.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
So you did nothing with hemp or cannabis when you were in graduate school?
Dr. Allison Justice:
I did not. I worked mainly with plants like pansies and poinsettias and garden mums, which coincidentally worked out quite well because the plants as far as how you push them into reproduction are very similar. So that actually worked out in the positive at this point.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
And what were some of your favorite memories about grad school or about being at Clemson University?
Dr. Allison Justice:
I would say it was the freedom that my major professor, Dr. Jim Faust gave me. He basically said, here are some parameters, but I want you to be able to explore and come up with your own project. And so my project involved a fungus, endophyte which I looked at and explored how pairing this endophyte with different species of plants, how does it do different things? So uptake nutrients or fight off different pathogens, or even help promote rooting. And so I was able to not only really get to dig in with plants, but I also got to gain a lot of experience in my cology, in the study of fungi. And that was just really cool getting to dip my toes into both waters and not just be in one.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
And once you were done with graduate school, did you start the Hemp Mine right away or did you work somewhere else or what did you do before the Hemp Mine?
Dr. Allison Justice:
So I consulted for a couple of years with greenhouses across the US and again, mainly ornamentals. And eventually, I just started getting calls from cannabis growers because again, it is a plant and there's a lot of similarities between cannabis and other crops. And so began consulting and fell in love with the plant and the opportunity for research with this plant. And eventually moved out to California to be a VP of cultivation for OutCo Labs, who is a vertically integrated medical cannabis company. And so I stayed there for three, three and a half years, and that was a really great experience because at that facility ... I was originally hired on to design and build a two-acre greenhouse which at that time was the biggest cannabis facility in California, which was really cool to be a part of. But we also had two indoor grow facilities and one outdoor as well as being vertically integrated.
Dr. Allison Justice:
So I got to really gain experience with the whole production. So everything from seed to sale and then really gain knowledge with extraction and formulation, et cetera, et cetera. So it really set me up to be able to do what we do today at the Hemp Mine, which is that same exact setup except with hemp instead of a THC producing plant.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
So you took all that knowledge from grad school and then all this experience from California and then decided to start the Hemp Mine. Did you start this with friends or colleagues? How did you go about organizing this business?
Dr. Allison Justice:
Well, I'm from South Carolina and when I was out in California, South Carolina passed a bill to allow hemp production. And there were only 20 farmers approved that first year. And my family's background is farming of all different kinds. On the land we grow our hemp today, my grandparents grew cotton there. And then my parents had everything from tree production to hay production, cattle, and greenhouses. So they're farmers. So I encouraged my mom to apply for a license. So she got a license. And then after, I guess, a year, year and a half after they started growing hemp, we decided, hey this is going really well. I'm going to move back and we're going to take this to the next level. And so it's a family endeavor, my brother and sister and mom all work here. And then one of my best friends from college, Travis Higginbotham, he works here as well. So pretty much a family endeavor.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
Yeah. That sounds like a great group to be a part of. That's awesome that your family can be there together. What are the goals of the Hemp Mine? What are you trying to provide or what makes your company different?
Dr. Allison Justice:
Well, as you guys are beginning, or I guess have the past couple of years worked in the cannabis industry promoting the water activity meter, you find that it's not always a lot of trustworthy people in the business or maybe not for the right reasons. And so it makes it very difficult to know who to trust in the industry. And so something we try to do is be very transparent in everything we do, whether it's what's in a tincture bottle or what's the background of this genetic that we're growing and breeding and what's the data we collected from last year that we can provide to you the data this year, where you can grow successfully and make money and feel confident doing the next year.
Dr. Allison Justice:
So transparency is something we really strive for no matter what we're doing, but I would say long-term goal, the biggest part of the Hemp Mine is our plant production unit. We grow vegetative liners and sell those across the US, distributed out of six different greenhouse partners while the breeding is actually taken here in South Carolina. So I would say plant genetics is where we're headed.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
So it sounds like transparency is really important as well as being a science-driven company. Some of the experiments that you've recently done on post-harvesting caught my attention. And I was wondering if you could talk about those experiments and what your goals were there.
Dr. Allison Justice:
Post-harvest is very exciting for me. One reason why this plant was so exciting for me is that there's so little research done and that's fault to regulation and it just being something that was done successfully in the black market. But at the same time, things were done from simple trial and error, not necessarily based off of science. Then even more so, universities weren't there to pitch in and help figure things out. So even though the plant science itself is lacking even more so, the post-harvest physiology is extremely lacking. And so when I was at OutCo, we did what I called to be the burp experiment. And to just explain what the burp is, you grow your cannabis flower, you dry it and you dry it for many reasons. Why you dry other foods, where it preserves, it doesn't spoil. And then you cure it.
Dr. Allison Justice:
And so when you say cure, you might think of wine or another type of food but the problem is you can't compare it one-to-one exactly as you would or even tobacco. There are some very different processes that are going on and the thing is, we don't even know what's happening much less know how to manipulate it. And so for me, the burp project was just to try to wrap some data points around what's even going on. And the cure traditionally is taking that dried hemp flower right after it's dried, put it in a bucket and I would say 99% of the people in the cannabis industry, it's just basically a five-gallon bucket from Home Depot.
Dr. Allison Justice:
And you put it in there and ... At this point, it's an art. So it could be for three days for this grower, it could be 14 days, it could be 30 days. It's whatever your experience is showing to be the best results or whoever taught you. And then it comes out and there's theory all over it. It's removing of nutrients which makes no sense. It's the exchanging of gases. Okay, well, which gases and which ones can we add to make that process better? We don't know yet. So anyway, I did a fast and dirty version one where we put it in buckets, we measure CO2, we measure oxygen, humidity, et cetera, et cetera. And we're also taking water activity before and throughout. And so what we really could take away is that there's a lot of CO2 being put out by the plants. Why? Don't know yet but we at least know that fact. The oxygen meter, just to be honest with you, it was not reading correctly.
Dr. Allison Justice:
So that's going to be something we repeat obviously. As well as ethylene was something we measured. But again, the ethylene that was put out by the curing process was so much that it was over the capacity of our testing unit. So when we repeat, we're going to have a different unit to be used, to be able to test ethylene. Because ethylene for me specifically is something that's very interesting. Back in grad school, when I dealt with post-harvest, it was taking cuttings. So you have a poinsettia plant, you take a small portion of the tip, and then you either stick it or ... Something we were looking at a lot is what's happening during shipping? Because in poinsettias, most of the stock plants are grown in South America and they're shipped up to the US. And if there's too much ethylene, they'll rot.
Dr. Allison Justice:
But if you think about bananas, you want to give bananas at a certain time, ethylene where they will ripen, where they're nice and enjoyable. So if this flower is putting off a lot of ethylene, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Do we want to inhibit that or do we want to encourage that? We don't know. So at least wrapping our heads around what's being produced naturally is step one. And then from there, we can do different things to inhibit or add to. So that's something, again, we will be looking at in greater detail. But I think the one really big takeaway from that project was that curing is a homogenization process. So our water activity, when we took it beforehand, keep in mind, it was about a week of drying. And so obviously the outside of the bud is going to dry out faster and the middle will be wetter.
Dr. Allison Justice:
And over time that'll work itself out. But what we found is that the water activity was lower when we put it out of the drying room, put it in the bucket, and then at the end, we tested again and it showed that the water activity was higher. These are sealed buckets and so we're not ... The theory is not that somehow water or moisture got into the bucket and made everything a higher water activity. It's more that all the buds are homogenizing. And so the water is evenly distributed through the buds. And so a lot of people guessed that, but I think that was probably the first time that anybody put a number on it. So that was really cool to find but obviously so much more to learn about what's happening in that bucket. We're just touching the surface here.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
This process really reminds me of winemaking and the same thing as the curing process. A lot of people do it in a very artistic way or a traditional way, but it sounds like you are trying to put science first and trying to put some numbers around what's actually happening during this burp experiment. What are your water activity values? Are you trying to target a certain water activity? Why is water activity important for understanding this process?
Dr. Allison Justice:
It's very important. So obviously for safety purposes, we have to dry it down to a certain percent or the microbes, which are there basically. But it's also important because, again, the cannabis industry has been working from the ground up. And when I first got to OutCo, the guys were trying to explain to me ... My question was, "When is the flower dry enough to then go into the curing process?" And they grabbed a stem and they bent it. And at the time it didn't make a noise, it just bent. And they said, "Well, this still needs to dry some. Once it's dry, it'll snap." And so for me, that was a little bit bothersome.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
[crosstalk 00:15:49] snap test that we've heard about.
Dr. Allison Justice:
Yes, this is the snap test that you'll actually hear a crack when you bend the stem. And so for myself and the Ph.D. chemist that was on staff, that was a little bit mind-boggling and we knew there had to be a better way. And so did a little reading and of course found that water activity is that metric, even greater than the moisture content meters that some people would use. We found that to be the standard and immediately went down that road and after we were able to put some metrics around, well, what should it be at, at certain points during the drying process, we ended up being very happy with that move.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
Did you investigate different curing conditions or are you using different environmental conditions or what does that part of your experiment look like?
Dr. Allison Justice:
Well, we had to start somewhere. And if you ask just about anybody in the cannabis industry, the goal is to have it about 60% relative humidity and about 60 degrees Fahrenheit temperature. So we started there and at that metric, we ended up having dry flower at about seven days. And so you hear everybody saying, "Oh well, if you go 30 days, 14 days you'll have a much better product." And so I got to reading through the journals out there ... Botrytis is one of the biggest problems during drying. Because if not dry enough, mold can grow but at the same time, we didn't want to dry too quickly because that would volatilize the terpines. And so the plant would lose the good smells that you want to keep. So in reading, we found that vitreous will not continue to grow under about 0.8.
Dr. Allison Justice:
And so our thought there was, well let's very quickly get it down to that 0.8 where the Botrytis will cease and continuing to grow. And then let's try to stretch out that time period instead of four or five days, let's stretch it out to about two weeks staying stable right under the 0.8 mark above the 0.7 mark, which ... It took quite a few times to figure out how to get the room to allow the plant to stay within those parameters which actually ended up being a lot of dehumidification at first and then actually writing will the help of foggers. And so that's how we kept the water activity stable. Again, looking through journals, we saw that a lot of the enzymatic activity continues to work within a plant between that 0.7 and 0.8.
Dr. Allison Justice:
So whatever it is that is happening with the plant at that point in which I like to come to think of it, if you're keeping it wet enough, it's almost a zombie plant. Not necessarily a flower but a plant. If it's not all the way dry, it has the potential to come back to life and maybe be rooted. So it's that halfway in between where there are enzymatic activities happening. So the goal there was to keep it for about 10 days at that higher water activity level, and then dry it off at the end very quickly to be basically what the consumer would prefer. And so that was the setup we had going for drying.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
And as you get ready for a second round of experiments, have you already started some new experiments? And what are the goals of this next round and what are you changing or what are you adding to those experiments?
Dr. Allison Justice:
Well, I guess this next round of experiments, we're not going to do too much with the actual drying step. I want to keep that just one step for drying, probably do the 60/60 just to be standard. And then what we'll really look at is what's happening in curing. So measuring before and afters there. I guess one other big thing we did find in the first burp experiment was that those five gallon buckets, that even the ones with the gaskets, they're not airtight. We had CO2 sensors in the rooms, so ambient and then CO2 sensors in the buckets. And what we found is that daily, you would see a spike of CO2 basically spiking at lunchtime. And so we were able to correlate that exactly with the ambient CO2 sensor. So they were in the rooms with the trimming team and so all that CO2 is actually coming from the trimming team and it was getting inside the bucket at the same rate. So what we're going to do in this next experiment is use that bucket just because it is the standard bucket. We need to understand what's happening there, but then we'll also use ... I haven't decided yet, either glass or stainless steel, truly sealed container where there's no effect from the ambient gases of what's in the room that it's in.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
And if someone listening wants to learn more about your research, is it published somewhere? Is it available for listeners to read? Where can they find out more about this experiment?
Dr. Allison Justice:
The first burp experiment, there's a PowerPoint on, I think it's called SlideShare. It's correlated with LinkedIn, the SlideShare. This next experiment, I'm actually doing with Clemson University. And so I'll try to give some sneak peeks on my Instagram but we'll actually publish that one. So it might take a little while to get that wrote up.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
Yeah, definitely takes a while, but we'll make sure to watch for it. One thing that I wanted to touch on, and I probably should have asked this earlier but a lot of people, when they hear about cannabis and hemp, they get confused by what it all means. Could you maybe take a step back and just describe some similarities and key differences to our listeners between cannabis and hemp?
Dr. Allison Justice:
Yeah. That's definitely a confusing one if you're new to cannabis in general. And so let's start with that. Hemp and marijuana, they both are cannabis sativa. It is the same plant, is just a plant that has diverted to be a high THC plant. So a plant that will, in fact get you high to a plant that produces a different metabolite, a different cannabinoid, CBD or CBG, which does not get you high which we would say is hemp. They look almost exactly the same but some, again, were either bred for a certain purpose or originated from a certain area where just in the wild it either by nature was high CBD, high THC. But for us, the biggest thing is the law, is regulation. And so for this plant cannabis sativa, law defines it as this plant if containing under 0.3% THC. So if it contains 0.4%, it's technically marijuana. If it's 0.3% or under, it's hemp. And that could be hemp, that's grown for CBD, that could be hemp, that's grown for fiber production.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
And that 0.3%, is that a national standard? Is that state by state and are there people pushing to change that percentage?
Dr. Allison Justice:
Yeah. That's a federal standard and I think if they moved it to 1%, everyone would be very, very happy. It's quite impressive to see how different in terms of yield specifically for CBD, how different a plant behaves at that 0.3 regulation versus even 0.8. You have very, very different plants, just how the genetics work from that difference. So if we could go to 1%, nobody's getting high on 1% and it would just provide a lot more opportunity for the farmer, for the breeder, for the industry as a total.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
And my last question today for you is, you've transitioned from graduate student. You were a VP of cultivation, now a co-founder and founder. What advice do you have for students or young professionals about growing their careers and taking it to the next level?
Dr. Allison Justice:
I would say put yourself out there. Take as many internships as you possibly can, be willing to move. Just for example, if you're a Clemson student and you want to get into this industry, get out there to California, to Colorado where they've been doing this a long time and network and get your hands dirty doing trimming, doing all those things that what will really pump you up to have a nice resume for when you are done with your studies. You're not just a 4.0 student, but you also have these experiences and now you have the VP at that company to give you recommendations. That says a lot. The other thing that's cool now versus even when I was in grad school is that Instagram is a huge networking tool.
Dr. Allison Justice:
I don't know why it worked out like this, but Instagram is a huge tool for cannabis and marijuana companies as well as growers of those companies having their own Instagram. And they're willing to talk to you and they're willing to share some things they're doing. So it's very easy to just look through your phone and try to network that way and keep up to date with what is going on in the industry. So biggest thing, just put yourself out there and get experience and try your hardest when you do get those opportunities.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Dr. Justice. We really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to getting this episode out there. We'll include your Instagram, if that's okay with you when we post it so that anyone listening if they want to learn more about your experiments or just connect that they can do that. So thanks again, Dr. Justice.
Dr. Allison Justice:
Yeah. Thank you.
Dr. Zachary Cartwright:
I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is Water In Food. Find this podcast on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Every year, billions of dollars are spent by food manufacturers to move water in and out of food products. As a food scientist, I am on a mission to understand how this can be done better.
Hosted by Zachary Cartwright, Ph.D.
Lead FOOD Scientist at METER Group