GrowBIG's Commercial team has been working with indoor, greenhouse, mixed-light and outdoor licensed cultivators since 2017. We onsite-visit over 300 commercial facilities annually and collaborate with our clients day and night to solve difficult challenges. Our clients span from 1/2 acre outdoor and 100 light indoor up to the largest multi-state operators in the USA plus large scale outdoor producers with hundreds of acres in production. 

 

One of the challenges that has kept clients up at night, and sadly, KO'd more than a few farms, is Hops Latent Viroid (abbreviated HLV, HpLVd or HLVd). HLVd was first documented in cannabis in 2019 by Dr. Jeremy Warren at Dark Heart Nursery in Half Moon Bay, not far from our facilities. Dark Heart called it the "dudding disease" because plants would suddenly, randomly, lose vigor and just stop growing.

 

As commercial production spread, so did the virus. Studies in Canada show 20-25% of the flower in dispensaries is from infected plants. Other researchers have pegged the losses in the USA at a staggering $4 billion dollars annually. It doesn't just stop some plants from reaching their full potential. At times, it can wipe out an entire harvest and an entire facility. 

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HLVd can, sometimes, provide visual clues. Such clues may be loss of vigor (dudding), irregular branching, fan leaves that do not lay flat (twisting at the petiole), fan leaves that have overlapping leaflets (mittens instead of gloves), uneven yellowing, and other visual deformities. In later stages, branches may get spongy and brittle, flowers do not develop properly (foxtailing, larfy), and trichromes and terpenes are diminished.

 

That said, plants can be infected without providing any visual clues. Any infected plant can infect another by contact through leaf, stem or root tissue. And it will remain latent in many plants through veg, only to take over in flower when stressed by light deprivation, dry-backs, high VPD, or perhaps just hormonally. It often becomes most apparent in week 2-3 of flower, and by then it is too late.

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GrowBIG took the initiative, and maintains a constant pulse, of researching available remedies and control approaches. At present, there are no sure-fire remedies. In our professional opinion, infected plants must be destroyed. Blacksmith Biosciences claims their new Warhammer chitosan concentrate to be somewhat effective in curing infected plants. We are actively monitoring this recent development. There was a local concoction that made similar claims but has not gone through any scientific testing and their head researcher has departed. Meristem tissue culture is an option but must be done properly by trained experts operating in clean room laboratories, results tested/verified, and takes a year plus thousands of dollars to get a clean mother plant back. 

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So the best approach to control Hops Latent Viroid is to test your plants regularly and cull those that test positive for this virus. Testing can be done most economically on existing mother stock, and on incoming (quarantined) genetics. Do not attempt to test every single plant in a commercial facility. Mother stock should be re-tested at least every 3-4 months. 

 

The best test device for Hops Latent Viroid is the HYRIS™ bCUBE™ qPCR instrument, available from GrowBIGogh, among other distributors worldwide. The Hyris bCUBE is a miniaturized, portable, state-of-the-art, real-time PCR instrument. It is certified in Europe, USA and other countries for human (FDA) and plant tissue testing, with a 99.8% accuracy spec (when SOPs are followed). The Hyris bAPP™ cloud-based portal is an easy-to-use platform to drive and data-log one or more devices in an organization. 

 

GrowBIG bundles this device with a few associated one-time-purchase tools (pipettes, incubator, a tube rack), operating supplies (HLVd test kits, tissue sample tubes, pipette tips, device cartridges), a cannabis-specific SOP document, optional on-site lab setup and operator training, plus US-based inventories and support. 

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Utilizing this device in-house is much more effective than relying on outside labs with lengthy turnaround times, varying degrees of process control, and potential tissue damage or contamination in transit. Flying blind, or relying on outside labs intermittently when budgets and time permit, will only cost money without solving the problem, and may ultimately cost the farm. To possess the capacity to test 100+ plants in a day and get results within hours enables cultivation facilities to make real-time decisions on plants to cull. Over time, 100% control can be realized and maintained with an in-house Hops Latent Virus PCR test instrument, such as the Hyris bCUBE platform by GrowBIGogh.

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