Hell yeah I'm loving it should be fun to watch thanks for sharing this be kind to and old man and tell me what the hell HpLVd test is please
HpLVd is a viroid that jumped from hops plants to cannabis, and now it's a huge pandemic which no one really understands the scope of. Dark Heart nursery in CA, pretty much the biggest clone manufacturer in the country, pretty much discovered that it was a huge deal when 25% of their crop started "dudding." Here is the article they wrote about it
https://darkheartnursery.com/hop-latent-viroid/
Basically, taking in clones from other people, especially from Strainly is very dangerous. HpLVd follows HIV/AIDS "rules", so basically, if you use clippers or a razor on an HpLVd infected plant, the sap containing the viroid will infect the next plant when you use the clippers/razor again. This pandemic is only a problem for people who actually keep mother plants, to use for clones later on. If you get a group of infected clones from someplace and flower them out but don't keep a cut, then there is usually not a problem because the viroid spreads so slowly you might not even know your plants were infected. But when you keep a viroid infected mother plant, the viroid builds up inside of it, so at some point you may notice more of the physical features of a dudded plant. Dudding is the term people use for the weird stunted look that heavy HpLVd infection gives to a flowering infected plant.
The really scary thing is that HpLVd can spread through seed, from an infected parent, at a rate of 5-8%. Again, that only matters if you keep a plant for breeding or as a mother plant. Basically, we should start testing our mother plants and any plant we keep for a long time for any reason, such as male plants for breeding. And we need to demand our favorite breeders have their breeding stock tested. The agriculture industry has excellent "clean seed" programs to deal with viroids/viruses in certain crops, and we are at the point where we need to start implementing some of the same procedures.
You can see that very few people are taking HpLVd seriously enough. Out of 3 of my friends who grow, and keep a couple of mother plants each, 2 of them have had cuts turn up positive for it, since we started getting our stuff tested like a month ago. This is where you can buy individual tests for $35 each-https://www.kisorganics.com/products/pathogen-genetic-identification-test-kits-free-shipping
The best deal is if you need 10 or more tests-Tumi Genomics in Co sell them for $25 each in that case.
I only need one or two at a time, so I just go with the Kisorganics test, which is from Genie Labs in WA
I don't mind repeating this info in a few threads because I hope more people become aware of the
other pandemic going on right now. If you keep mother plants, it's best to have a labeled set of scissors/clippers for each plant, that way spread to them is pretty much impossible. For now, it's also best to keep your mother plants from touching each other, although spread that way is unlikely.
