CBG and CBD: Two Cannabinoids, One Hemp Plant

One plant, two very different yields

Cut a mature hemp plant and there is plenty of CBD in it. Look in the same plant for CBG and you are usually under one percent. Same field, same botany, two completely different quantities. That gap explains most of what separates the two oils on the shelf, including what they cost to produce. It helps to have a few points straight before any label comparison makes sense.

1. Chemically, both compounds begin at the same address. The 1998 work of Fellermeier described a hemp transferase enzyme attaching a prenyl group to olivetolate, which yields cannabigerolic acid, better known as CBGA [1].
2. That same paper identified CBGA as the precursor of tetrahydrocannabinol [1]. The front of the pathway feeds several things, not one.
3. From that single precursor, the route branches. One of those branches leads to cannabidiolic acid, CBDA, which is the acid form of CBD [1].
4. So the order inside the plant is CBGA first, CBDA afterwards. CBG belongs to the early stage. CBD is what the plant keeps accumulating.
5. By harvest, most of the early compound has already been converted. Under one percent of the plant means CBG has to be gathered from a small remainder rather than taken from a stockpile.
6. Both sit inside a large family of plant compounds. The 2005 review by ElSohly catalogued the chemical constituents of the plant, cannabinoids included [2].
7. Research on both starts from the same place too: the endocannabinoid system, the receptor system that cannabinoid research took as its starting point. Evidence for individual cannabinoids is at different stages, and CBG has been studied far less than CBD.

Scarcity as a line item

Price differences between cannabinoid oils usually trace back to plant chemistry rather than positioning. Here the reason is measurable. CBD is what a mature hemp plant has piled up. CBG is what remains of the compound that came first.

Read the table downwards and the pattern is consistent. Nothing here is about one cannabinoid being finer than the other. It is about how much of each a plant hands over at the end of a season, and how much work sits behind the milligrams that reach a bottle. Abundance made CBD the first cannabinoid the category learned to talk about. Scarcity is why CBG arrived on shelves years later, and why it is still the smaller half of most catalogues, ours included.

Label against label, in milligrams

The two Cibdol bottles are written in different units, which is where confusion usually starts. One states a percentage. The other states milligrams for two compounds. Same 10ml bottle underneath.

The row that does the most work is the total. A 5% CBD oil and the CBG oil both mention the figure 500mg, and they mean different things by it. In one bottle that is the whole cannabinoid content. In the other it is the larger of two entries. If you want to compare the two honestly, compare bottle totals and compound counts, not the numbers printed largest.

The maths behind the front number

Five percent of ten millilitres

On a CBD oil, the percentage is a proportion of the oil in the bottle. It is not a total, and it means nothing without the bottle size beside it. Our CBD oils run from 5% to 40%, always in 10ml. Do the arithmetic once and it stops feeling abstract. Ten millilitres at 5% works out at 500mg of CBD. The same 10ml at 40% holds 4000mg. Between those two, the oil itself, the format and the pipette are unchanged. Only the proportion of CBD moves. Ten millilitres is the constant across the whole range, so the percentage carries all the information.

Two compounds, one total

The CBG oil states its contents in milligrams instead: 500mg CBG and 250mg CBD in the same 10ml bottle. That is a 2:1 ratio and 750mg of cannabinoid in total, spread across two compounds rather than one. Set it next to the 5% CBD oil and the difference is clear enough. Five hundred milligrams in total, one compound, versus 750mg in total, two compounds. The coincidence in that first figure catches people out regularly. Same number, different molecule, and in the CBG bottle there are another 250mg of CBD listed underneath it. Label against label is the only comparison that holds.

Which bottle ends up in the basket

The abundant side of the plant

CBD oil is the uncomplicated shelf. The cannabinoid is the one a mature harvest gives up in quantity, the bottle format does not vary, and the decision in front of you is a concentration between 5% and 40%. One cannabinoid, one choice. A higher percentage is a specification, not a recommendation, because all it changes is how many milligrams sit inside the 10ml. Pick the concentration that makes the amount you prefer straightforward to take, then leave the number alone.

The scarcer side

The CBG oil comes from the under-one-percent end of the plant, and there is one formula rather than a range: 500mg CBG with 250mg CBD. Worth noticing that CBG is named alongside CBD on that label, not instead of it. Both compounds are printed, both are batch-tested, and the certificate lists THC at 0.000%, so nothing in the bottle is intoxicating. Since 2014 we have kept to one discipline here: publish what is in the bottle, per batch, so the label can be read and checked before anyone buys it rather than afterwards. Two cannabinoids from one plant, both accounted for in milligrams.