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By Pam Chmiel
Along with THC, terpenes play a significant role in the effects you get from consuming cannabis. But they are just one class of hundreds of aroma-active compounds that can affect a person’s biochemical processes and feelings.
I interviewed Dr. Ed Szczygiel, an expert in sensory science and head of product development at Cambium Analytica, where he partners with cannabis brands to create products based on sensory science. He also spearheaded the creation of one of the first cannabis aroma lexicons to reveal other compounds that can be used to develop unique standout products.
Tell us about the cannabis aroma lexicon you created.
Our goal for the lexicon is to provide a means to measure the properties of cannabis, which is complex, and eventually start to classify cannabis and set the industry standards. 
Cannabis is an unexplored continent of sensory science with so much potential. And coming from the food science world, I was fascinated by cannabis as a consumer product. When I realized quality metrics didn’t exist for the cannabis industry as they do for fruits and vegetable commodities, we developed a formal sensory program for all to use.
Because cannabis is a diverse plant, there’s so much to understand about it and how it might influence someone liking cannabis. My co-author for the cannabis aroma lexicon, Shelby Zinsky, and I started by talking to people about what they liked or didn’t like about cannabis. We enlisted small groups to examine different cannabis buds and quizzed them on their sensory experience. We found that the smell of cannabis influenced if they liked it or not, and we started to get a feel for how they described it and what they were looking at, what caught their eye, and what didn’t.
The groups revealed people who had smoked cannabis for a long time and people who hadn’t and how they interacted with the product. I remember one person in particular who is not a cannabis user, and she described one of the buds as smelling just like her grandpa’s couch. It stuck with me because just smelling a cannabis bud unlocked a vivid memory.
That’s when we realized how sensory triggers could influence product experience and felt compelled to create a cannabis aroma lexicon to help brands differentiate their offerings.
What challenges do you face in creating a cannabis lexicon?
One of the biggest challenges is deciphering people’s descriptions of cannabis samples to create a usable tool. So, for example, you might have a cannabis plant that smells vaguely fruity, and one person might say it smells like an apple. Another person might say it smells like peach. Twenty people can smell it, and they might describe something completely different.
These subjective descriptions make it complicated for a brand to identify the right scent for its product when consumers have such varied sensory perceptions. In the example above, you could use orchard as the description to resonate with the person who smelled apple and the person who smelled peach and still be unique enough to build a brand around.
The trick is coming to a common language that describes the strains since there’s a lot of personal variation in how we perceive aromas. So when someone goes to the dispensary and says, I’d like something with a bit of an apple, the budtender could provide them something in that orchard category.
It will be challenging to reidentify strains, but the best way to do it is by formal evaluations of the cannabis plant and reporting consistent findings in the genetics that warrants a categorization.
The other challenge will be getting the cannabis lexicon well-known enough and accepted by people naming these new strains because the problem will persist as different versions emerge.
Does the lexicon identify attributes besides aroma that may be useful for product development and research?
The words we use to describe cannabis will grow beyond just aroma, even though aroma is probably one of the more critical sensory attributes of cannabis in addition to texture, visuals, appearance, and even some slight oral stuff. You know, you squeeze it, you might hear crackling there, we use all our senses to taste food, and it’s not different for cannabis.
Does the lexicon also include consumer reviews of the different strains?
We did ask about likes and dislikes in our study to start exploring it, but we plan to describe it objectively and let the brands interpret it to target specific consumer groups. It’s still a work in progress, and we need to know what we have before measuring who it resonates with.
Are you documenting other consumption methods in the lexicon, like edibles, vapes, or tinctures?
Sensory science has been used for years to make the best food products, and it is exciting to apply it to cannabis flower. We can apply traditional food science techniques to measure all sorts of things about edibles. Quality is an issue many of our clients struggle with when creating gummies. And, when you’re infusing products, there are no exceptions. You need to use sensory science as a quality control method to know what your targets are, what your variance is allowed, and whether your inputs are good. Sensory’s role is critical to the success of a product by developing specifications from the beginning of production to the end user consuming it.
We also look at concentrates, but it is just a general category of rosin and resin concentrates, and so far, it works well. There are a couple of unique sensory things to consider with concentrates, like aromas from the processing steps, that could be something we measure and explore to see if they carry over into the actual consumption experience.
How can an aroma lexicon help cannabis brands differentiate their products in the marketplace?
The lexicon visualizes the market as a whole and identifies consumer segments for opportunities in product development. It is step one in determining what smells trigger cannabis likes and dislikes, what is important to the consumer, and what makes cultivars unique. Getting these answers is a long journey and takes time. And similar to tomatoes, they’ve had centuries to look at this stuff, and now they have a good sense of when they have something truly unique.
If I were a brand using the lexicon for product research and development, I would look at the description to find a suitable strain for my intended audience, take the objective descriptive data, interpret it, and create ad copy to attract consumer attention.
Identifying your target market’s preferred consumption methods and smoking rituals will also help inform your research and development and allow you to target those habitual processes people use at home.
Are there any emerging trends or advancements in sensory science that you think will impact the development of cannabis brands in the future?
One of the most notable innovations to measure consumer preferences will be at-home testing software. Traditionally sensory analysis occurs in a highly controlled setting in a lab or at a specific location where we think the product might be used. At-home testing represents a more natural context in which a product would be used. But, one thing we haven’t looked at is the actual smoking experience of it.
There are a lot of ethical and regulatory barriers to doing cannabis in-home testing. But I think as we get better software that’s more accessible for someone to have on their phone and record what they are smelling and feeling with a specific strain will help us collect more sensory data. But it requires meticulous interpretation, so you’re not making broad generalizations and promoting misinformation. And as a scientist, I’m very particular about interpreting consumer reviews without taking the proper controls.
As the cannabis aroma lexicon gains industry acceptance, it will be a powerful tool for brands to tap into new ways to differentiate cannabis products and take the lead in the marketplace.
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