HOP LATENT VIROID

Hop Latent Viroid (HLVd) is a pathogen that can spread quietly, never showing any symptoms, but cause serious damage to your crop. Agriscience utilizes an extremely sensitive qPCR assay to identify HLVd before it destroys your crop.

Here are some things to know about HLVd: 

Potential Production Impact

  • 30% loss of growth vigor
  • 30% loss of flowering yield
  • 50%-70% loss of THC content

Transmission

  • Tools and equipment
  • Clones and Cuttings
  • Infected seeds

Symptoms

  • Reduced yield
  • Reduced cannabinoid content
  • Stunted growth
  • Limited terpene production
  • Smaller, sparse flowers
  • Fewer trichomes
  • Deformed leaves

Consistently testing or HLVd is key to identifying and reducing the spread of the viroid. The latent nature of the viroid means it’s necessary to test and retest throughout the growth cycle to ensure plants remain clean. Combined with proper sanitation and handling protocols, a strict testing regimen is the best approach to maintaining a clean grow while preventing the spread of HLVd.

If you operate a nursery, we recommend testing all your mother stock on a monthly basis. This ensures your mother stock remains clean and potentially-infected cuttings don’t leave the nursery and spread HLVd in your grow.

If you’re a cultivator, we recommend that you batch test samples over the course of the grow. For example, a cultivator samples clones with 4-5 nodes of growth and then re-tests at least 30 days later to demonstrate cleanliness during the vegetative phase. This catches any sick plants before flowering, preventing the spread across plants and reducing the risk of crop loss during the all-important flower time.

If you are a Colorado licensed facility you can manifest leaf samples to us. If not, you can imprint dna onto FTA cards such as these:

Whatman FTA PlantSaver Card