I’m growing (illegaly) the Sacred Plant since 25 years, and I’m specialized in Agro-Organic for Field and greenhouse cultivation (intensive organic market growing state diploma)
I do not know everything about plant physiology
And i love learning about it everyday…
I create this topic because i want to know what you Ogerzzz think about this 2 types of virus who affect our beloved plant and above all how we can be sure to properly diagnose one or the other of these 2 viruses.
for my part I have never noticed anything on my indoor cannabis plants except thrips, mites
and for the outside just botrytis and phytium.
I’m curious and made some research about TMV on spread and transmissibility for cannabinacea and i want to refer to one or more serious studies or even better a scientific publication, I can’t find anything…
To date for me there is no publication on which to base myself and if there are, I am quite open to consult them.
moreover knowing that tobacco is part of the nightshade family that it is complicated, even quite rare that a disease defined in a certain species can migrate to another species…
As for the latent viroid of hops, it is certain that it can be transmitted because it is from the same family.
What do you gals and guys think and can you enlighten me on this subject ?
TMV almost never crops up in pathology testing. IDK if I’ve ever actually seen a confirmed example. I have seen a few beet curly top virus.
I have seen a ton of positive HLV pathology reports. And a bad run in with it myself woo that was fun.
There’s a few threads on here about it.
I’ve seen a few reports of it on seed plants. So it almost certainly can be spread through seed, but almost everyone seems to have it come in on clones. Literature says it is present in hops seeds from infected stock at about 8%. I’ve also seen literature that suggests it can’t come from pollen, just the pollen recipient. Not sure, wouldn’t trust either. I think it’s far more widespread than people realize, but, ya know, latent. But at the same time, clone stem diseases also seem to masquerade as HLV. You know, bad cuts when you chop into the stem it’s all brown/grey. Or maybe they are comorbid.
Some deny it’s very existence and chalk it up to other diseases like stem nematodes. Some of these people are actually very competent growers so I can’t say. I suspect stem nematodes is false, I’ve had it on plants treated with professional very non-organic pesticides that will kill those. But clones do get diseases that aren’t HLV. I’ve seen that, too.
Brittle branches and small non-upward growth, biggest sign though is buds that have no frost, no smell. Branches will literally just snap clean apart with almost no pressure. Sometimes just one branch the same plant with other perfectly healthy nugs. Sometimes the whole plant.
Some 15 or so years back in my outdoor tomatoes would get what I believed to be curly top virus, and they were always loaded with aphids. Pink and green were the two colored aphids I was annually plauged by. I couldn’t figure out why, and where these damn things were coming from. They don’t fly so I was certain they must have been coming from the neighboring property’s. I went out in search as polite as I could be, asked permission to access their land and stated my purpose. Long story short, turns out that I did discover what I believed to be the source of this aphid army. It was a monster nightshade plant that was bearing fruit. I kid you not, it was covered top to bottom. There’s was aphids on top of aphids, I’ve never seen so many before in my entire life on just one plant.
It’s my belief, insects that feed on plant sap are the main cause for transmission of these viruses. I did a test the following year, I decided to forgo planting any tomatoes in my raised beds and use two 30 gallon fabric pots, two tomato plants. One of them I neglected and the other one I cared for like I normally would any plant in my garden. Took brix readings from both periodically and the high brix plant eventually became loaded with aphids, whereas the low brix plant barely had any. Guess which one developed curly top… the high brix plant. I even went as far as to foliar neem oil weekly. The damn aphids still went for the high brix plant.
Now I haven’t done any research in quite some time but to the best of my memory, cannabis is a distant relative of nightshade and tomatoes are a closer cousin to nightshade. This could be pure coincidence but it seems to me that aphids have a preference and can somehow tell plants apart. Same ideology with any insect that is either a chewer or a sucker, they have their target plant species and that’s the main mechanism in which any virus is spread. There’s also cross contamination via gardening tools or pruners, but more often than not, it’s insects from the start.
That is a possibility as the high brix plant was being cared for as I normally would, and the other was neglected. Every 2 weeks I’d brew an AACT using EWC and blackstrap molasses but from my experience the sucrose in blackstrap wasn’t as bennifical to the plant per say as it was for the microbial herd during the brewing. Basically it’s just a source of calcium, Magnesium and potassium. Plants produce there own glucose via photosynthesis and utilize this durring the dark hours.
I had pretty bad aphids this winter, and had a higher N content in my soil than normal. I think it makes the leaves more tender for the bugs. Juicy and delicious to an aphid, apparently
The castings sure give an N boost…
All I know is I struggle to remember last time I got TMV and I struggle just as hard to remember my last cigarette, was a rolling tobacco smoker for many years before starting to grow and in the beginning of my “growing career” I did see some TMV, but it’s been years for both smoking tobacco and for seeing TMV.
I never got a lot of TMV and only started getting really serious about growing after my addiction to the real whacky tobaccy (regular tobacco) ended. Though my wife might say I was real serious about growing years before that
Funny thing about that, I was watching a youtube video (I really wish I could find it) I think on diseases in cannabis a few years back, and one of the speakers on the zoom call, a P.H.D., was saying they use PCR to detect HLV and he was of the personal opinion that the typical testing used too high of a cycle threshold, almost guaranteeing false positives. He said they were using something like 24 cycles, at least during the george w bush years. Do you happen to know the typical Ct value used in those positive reports?
I got this going on passed from plant to plant the last two grows only on a few plants tho of different species. Not doing anything but making the plant a big shaggy looking. Im tossing all dirt and scrubbing all grow equipment at the end of the season. Restart fresh. I hope this does not transfer thru seeds.
All my plants are from seed def transfers thru seeds. Il cut out any plants that show this and see what I can salvage. Looks like a total loss tho all needs cut and sterilized
Checking out photos of both TMV and hp virus I am pretty sure what I have going is the tobacco virus. Not really doing a ton of damage but ugly for sure.
I had some look exactly like that. Did 5 mosaic virus tests and all came back negative. I keep doing research and found someone who had photos exact like ours and had positive tests for hplv.
They Said
many growers suspect TMV in plants that develop a mosaic-like pattern of discoloration on the leaves that cannot be attributed to nutrient deficiencies. Our team has screened several suspected TMV plants only to find Hop Latent Viroid. While this does not rule out the possibility of TMV infecting cannabis and hemp plants, we have not been able to confirm an infection, yet. Perhaps you will be the first!
