IMHO, the SRI GC's are NOT toys, and should be up for the potency part of state mandated 3rd party testing.
But only if you're willing to do the chemical modifications required to distinguish cannabinoid acids from their decarboxylated equivalents.
My issue with the chemical modification is that the -COOH they protect is the same -COOH that your body removes when joining Amino Acids together to make proteins. If you can't join amino acids to make proteins, you die...over the course of a week or two.
In an actual testing lab, keeping your co-workers soda pop/lunch/half smoked joint off the lab bench should be a no brainer. I have not yet been able to achieve this.
Most 3rd party labs I'm aware of use Liquid Chromatography (HPLC or UHPLC) for cannabinoid determination because they can get quantitative results without chemical modification. the least expensive detection is UV. Not all UV detectors are created equal. a DAD or "diode array detector" is considered the best for cannabinoids (or so I hear). You're looking at about $20k for an entry level HPLC (wild guess).
Terpenes can be done on an HPLC, but Restek recommends against this strategy
https://blog.restek.com/?p=33071
Head space is the industry standard. I tried to get it working with essentially the same GC you are proposing, and it was nowhere near "quantitative".
SRI does have a better head space setup, and if you're going to try to get
terpenes and/or residual solvents, I recommend you chat with them about it.
http://srigc.com/home/product_detail/heated-static-headspace-injector
I know nothing about it other than having read the description yesterday. It seems to have most of the do-dads the chemists I talked to said I would need to add to my GC if I wanted reliable terpene or solvent analysis. A second FID would seem useful as well.
In Oregon our labs now have to be state certified. The method validations & statistics required to meet this certification were above my pay grade. I watched a number of labs who did not have a masters or PhD level chemist on staff fail to meet those requirements. I spent a little time working in a lab who were using TLC for cannabinoids & an SRI GC for pesticide testing. I left because I considered the pesticide reports they were generating were complete bullshit. They did ok for a couple of years, but when the state certification requirements came into effect, they sold to an out of state group who bought in $100k worth of equipment and a real chemist.
I find my SRI GC-FID awesome for in-house testing, but would never dream of trying to run a full scale testing lab with it. I believe SRI's "pesticide" setup can be trained to recognize specific pesticides (great if you know what you sprayed), but for general purpose screening a Mass Spec is required (again, I'm not a chemist).
your mileage may vary.
