Ali Bektas, Cannabis Business Times
As HLVd continues to spread through the global cannabis industry, testing has become crucial to preventing the viroid from impacting cultivators’ crops. Not all tests, sampling processes, nor labs, however, are created equal. Here is what you should know to ensure successful viroid control.
HLVd, HpLVd, HLV, duds, dudders, the hops, hop latent viroid. Whatever you decide to call it, this 256-base-pair, circular RNA molecule, identified in cannabis almost exactly 5 years ago, continues to torment those who cultivate cannabis professionally.
Despite the pain, we have learned considerably about HLVd’s interaction with and negative effects on cannabis. There have been notable peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, as well as valuable posts from growers and researchers alike.
Testing labs that offer PCR detection services for HLVd fall into two types. Select labs will design their own tests. The second type, the majority, will purchase their tests from commercial providers that design and sell reaction kits. To my knowledge of those selling tests to labs, only one exists that specializes solely on cannabis pathogens. All others are generalists and offer assays for a wide variety of plants and plant pathogens, and therefore might not have the comprehensive knowledge of cannabis genetics nor possess samples in-house to use during assay development.
So far, there has not been more than a loose hypothesis on how HLVd wreaks havoc on cannabis but the gravity of the problem is crystal clear. In a previous article I co-authored for Cannabis Business Times shortly after the discovery, we traced the…