Most cannabis testing labs only test for what they consider to be the top 10 cannabis terpenes… even though it has been proven that there are more than 40 different terpenes regularly found in cannabis.
This seems like it would be highly problematic in getting true results from a test.
Their testing equipment, (usually a Gas Chromatograph or a Mass Spectrometer), first, needs to be taught to recognize these terpenes, flavinoids and other compounds that are found in cannabis before it can identify these same compounds during testing.
These machines must be taught what terpenes, flavinoids and other compounds are by using a pure, labratory-grade, standard. Without these standards, the machine doesn’t know what it’s detecting because it has no knowledge of terpenes and flavinoids until it has been taught what that compound looks like.
If you send in a sample in that you believe is high in b-Caryophyllene, because it has a black pepper smell or taste to it, but the lab hasn’t taught its testing machine what the b-Caryophyllene compound signal is, then the testing machine won’t know it’s even present in the sample and will give a result with a different dominant terpene, instead.