The Department of Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) in Colorado mandates that yeasts and molds do not exceed 10,000 colony forming units (CFUs) in cannabis flower, concentrates, edibles, and topical products. Some state certified lab testing facilities choose to use 3M petrifilms to determine this total yeast and mold count. The petrifilms contain 5-Bromo-4-chloro-3-indolyl phosphate <i>p</i>-toluidine salt for the colorimetric detection of alkaline phosphatase-labeled molecules. In the presence of yeasts or molds, when alkaline phosphatases are elevated, such as in candida albicans, a blue precipitate forms that can be correlated to CFUs. Typically, these CFUs are counted manually using a hand held cell counter or by marking off the CFUs with a pen on top of the pertifilm. However, manual counting can be difficult when large amounts of CFUs have to be tracked leading to inaccurate values, and the procedure can be time consuming. Often manual counting is limited and results are reported as too numerous to count (TNC). ImageJ can be a tool to automate this counting process. This study reports the results of comparing the manual counting versus automated counting methods of CFUs in yeasts and molds of marijuana flowers. This automated method with Image J can lead to a faster and more user friendly counting method with the ability to save and store images for long-term access to data. Client reports could then benefit by including the actual counted images instead of having to rely only on the state certified labs manual plate count.

Using ImageJ for automated counting of colony forming units of yeast and molds in cannabis flowers

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.