GACP — Good Agricultural and Collection Practices
The global baseline standard for cultivation and primary processing of pharmaceutical-grade crops — the certificate most export markets and GMP manufacturers require before they will take a facility's material at all.
Everything from seed to the primary-processed product.
GACP sets the quality-management baseline for the earliest stages of the value chain: seed and propagation material, site and environmental controls, cultivation practices, harvest timing and method, primary processing (drying, curing, size reduction), packaging, storage and transport, personnel hygiene and training, pest and disease management, water and input quality — and the documentation system that ties all of it together into something an auditor can actually verify.
Traceability
Batch and lot records that connect a specific seed or clone through cultivation, harvest, and processing to a specific output — the first thing most auditors pull a thread on.
Environmental Monitoring
Temperature, humidity, and light logs for both the grow and the dry/cure rooms, with documented ranges and what happens when a reading falls outside them.
SOP Coverage
A written, current, actually-followed procedure for every cultivation stage — not a template downloaded once and never revisited.
Personnel Records
Training completion tied directly to the SOPs staff are expected to execute, refreshed on a schedule, not just signed once at hiring.
GACP is the gate every export route runs through.
A licensed grower with strong agronomy and zero compliance infrastructure cannot legally export without a GACP certificate — and any material headed into GMP-regulated manufacturing (see EU-GMP Annex 7) has to clear GACP at the cultivation stage first. It is the foundation the rest of the certification stack is built on.