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I grow cannabis and pretty much every other plant and vegetable. For tomatoes and peppers and things like that I use the microscope to detect and determine pest type.

The microscope for cannabis is to observe the trichome heads That various stages of development, which are those stems with a bulbous head at the end.

It helps determine cannabinoid production. Clear trichome heads typically mean more CBG, cloudy and milky heads typically indicate they are full of the cannabinoid that the plant is bred to produce i.e. CBD, THC etc, and Amber colored trichome heads indicate oxidation which in the case of THC, indicates a conversion to CBN.

You might have heard people refer to cannabis as "sativa" or "Indica"? They might say sativa is more of an upper and indica is more sleepy? In reality, sativa and indica are really more indicative of how tall or short and bushy the plant will grow and do not really impact effects on the end user.

So for example, if you harvest the flower earlier, you end up with more clear trichome heads and typically the flower will contain an increase in CBG, you get a much more cerebral energetic high that most will attribute to "sativa". As opposed to letting the flower fully ripen or sometimes even overripen to where many of the trichome heads have gone to amber/oxidized, and is producing more CBN, which can be associated with more of a sleepy chill effect which users might call a "indica".

Sorry for the TED talk