The aroma and flavour compounds: which terpenes a plant produces, what decides how much of them survives to the jar, and how much of the popular story about terpenes steering the effect of a cultivar is supported by anything.
Terpenes are volatile, which is the whole problem. They evaporate with heat, with time and with rough handling, so most of the difference between two jars of the same cultivar was decided during drying, trimming and storage rather than during the grow. Flavonoids, less discussed, carry colour and some of the bitterness and are far more stable.
Two claims are worth handling carefully here. The idea that a named terpene reliably produces a particular effect in a person is far weaker in evidence than the marketing suggests, and the honest version is that aroma correlates with chemotype rather than causing an outcome. And a terpene profile on a certificate of analysis is a snapshot of one sample at one moment, and the same flower will test lower three months later.
There are no reference articles in this sub-board yet; the harvest and post-harvest threads below are the closest thing until there are.
Related elsewhere on the forum: Harvest, Drying and Curing: The Science Behind Quality in Harvesting, Drying and Curing, and How to Read a Cannabis Certificate of Analysis in Testing and Analytics.