This effect can destroy the retail value of a crop. It was commonly called “dudding,” and it would only show up at the end of the crop’s life cycle, distorting the plant’s shape and reducing the amount of active compounds produced, like THC, by as much as 50%. HLVd has likely been spreading in cannabis farms for more than a decade, but at first, growers didn’t know what was harming their harvest. Travel | The easiest, most eye-popping hike on the California coastįood | This quirky spaghetti restaurant is a ‘dying breed’ in SF A pernicious pest on cannabis farms Local | A posh SF neighborhood hides the city’s last bastion of weird art … It’s important for people to have this type of testing.”Ĭulture | How a SF man fought racism and made $5M by saving Stinson Beach “You can take microbiology to the public and put it in their hands. “We didn’t just identify a great test that is accurate, but it’s easy to use and it doesn’t require a high level of expertise,” said Luke Horst, director of business development for Purple City Genetics. The company said this new at-farm testing could be pivotal in slowing the spread of this global pathogen, as it allows farmers to quickly identify infected plants. That’s much faster than the current methods for finding HLVd infections, which are predominantly done by farmers mailing samples to labs and waiting days or even weeks to get a result.

Oakland’s Purple City Labs released a new HLVd test earlier this year that can be conducted on site and deliver results to pot farmers in just a few hours. It’s spreading globally, and a recent scientific paper declared the pathogen was the “biggest concern for cannabis” growers worldwide.īut one Bay Area startup has a new tool that they think will stop the pathogen’s spread in its tracks. It’s now infected at least 90% of California’s cannabis grows, according to a 2021 estimate. HLVd was first documented in cannabis in a pair of scientific studies published in 2019, including a study that confirmed the viroid’s presence in samples from a Santa Barbara pot farm.

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