Granddaddy Purple potency: THC, CBD and terpenes from 512 lab tests

How published THC figures compare

Strain databases publish a single figure or a range: Leafly lists 17%, AllBud 20–27% and Weedmaps 19–28%.^2,3,4 Seed sellers advertise up to 20% (Royal Queen Seeds; up to 19% for its autoflower), 20–23% (United Cannabis Seeds) and 25% (ILGM), while Ken Estes’s own Grand Daddy Purp line is listed on SeedFinder at 16.5% THC.^5,6,7,8,9 In state lab results the median was 17.87%, 90% of tests came in below 23.62% and 3.1% reached 25% or more, so the top of AllBud’s and Weedmaps’ ranges describes unusual flower rather than typical flower.¹

Purple City Genetics’ Eric Rosen told Leafly that “testing killed purples. Even the best cuts never tested above 16-17% THC.”¹⁰ Our median is close to that, and 53 of the other 57 strains in our dataset have a higher one.¹ The state mix matters: Maryland 16.29% (220 tests), Washington 22.51% (181 tests), Nevada 15.63% (45 tests), Michigan 13.93% (44 tests), Massachusetts 16.20% (15 tests); Washington’s median is 8.58 points above Michigan’s.¹ The year with the most tests, 2022 (123), had a median of 19.34%.¹

Leafly’s terpene profile lists myrcene first, then pinene and caryophyllene.² Our 55 tests with individual terpene values, 45 of them from Nevada labs, rank limonene 0.24%, β-caryophyllene 0.21%, β-myrcene 0.14% by median.¹ Different labs, products and years can produce different rankings; only a batch’s own certificate describes that batch.

Published CBD figures are small but above what most of our tests found: AllBud lists 1%, United Cannabis Seeds 0.4% and Estes’s listing 0.35%, while in state lab results 287 of the 439 tests that reported CBD found none, and 2 reached 1% or more.^1,3,7,9

Download the data

The 512 matched tests behind this page, one row per test: state, test date, lab, product name, product type, total THC, total CBD and terpenes.

License: CC BY 4.0. Credit: “Source: Cannlytics, cannabis_results (CC BY 4.0), analysis by Official Cannabis.” The data were filtered and aggregated from the original.

Limits of this data

• Coverage is uneven. MD (220), WA (181), NV (45), MI (44) supply most of the 512 tests, with MA (15), HI (3), CA (2), CT (1), FL (1) adding the rest, so California is barely represented; Oregon and Rhode Island results carry no product names and could not be matched.
• Washington tests count only when the strain field and the product name both name the strain; 286 Washington flower results with only a generic product name (such as “Flower Lot”) were left out.
• Some labs report higher THC than others, so we publish medians and middle ranges rather than maxima. One lab supplied 33.6% of these tests (30 labs in total), and one producer accounts for 34.0% of the 247 tests that record a producer.
• Terpene medians come from 55 tests with individual terpene values, 45 of them from Nevada labs; Maryland’s 195 results report only total terpenes, and Washington, Michigan and Hawaii report none. We matched names strictly: crosses and near-miss names (for example “Harlequin x GDP”) are excluded and counted, and duplicate certificates are removed.