No apologies needed, good conversation and happy to find others interested in the topic. I am new here and I just wanted to make sure I don’t clutter up a thread, and cannabis fermentation is something I could talk about all day. My hypothesis is compatible bacterial and fungal enzymes are making changes to the cannabinoids/terpenes, combined with the fermentation conditions (acids / pH, alcohols, reactive terpenes(solvents), water levels, oxygen levels, temperature, UV light) present in the fermentation environment also making changes to cannabinoid/terpenes.
As cool as it would be for cannabinoid producing yeasts to live on cannabis buds, it is most likely not what’s happening here. Yeast populations are unlikely to develop the ability to synthesize cannabinoids through spontaneous mutation or horizontal gene transfer in a natural environment, which is why CRISPR is used to make yeast strains that can be cloned and used for industrial production of different compounds.
EDIT: here’s the thread, did not populate with links but I wanted to get it started: