UNITEDGROOVES
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@We Solidarity any word on the test results?
@Aladeen OG if you're using a tea you're already giving your plants a huge boost in harpin proteins...I haven't noticed a difference with or without them I'm pretty sure their only purpose is to boost the plant's SAR which already happens with tea and/or a good environment...
edit to add @UNITEDGROOVES and everyone else I just sent away eight samples. three infected samples, three healthy samples from the same batch, a control sample, and an infected sample from the crown of the root. the strains being tested are both strains I or a friend started from seed and have not been circulated, and samples were taken from the stem, leaf, and a slice from the main trunk near the crown.
Took a while to get the test I wanted...all sorts of people want to charge for one test or another, I got together with some scientists working with hemp who are going to do full DNA sequencing on each sample, so instead of testing for a handful of organisms we'll be getting charts back listing what each strand of DNA sequenced belonged to. Next round of tests will all be soil and tea tests, really excited for those but still a month or so out.
yeah i just looked into to it too. its near impossible to test by culture for phytoplasmas so its essential to do pcr and get that done. if they have the primers to replicate out the phytoplasm they can tell what strain it is. my guess from reading on another site is that its phytoplasma. some pretty compelling similarities of symptoms. bogus part is is that unlike virus and other types of pathogens its very difficult to cure in a plant. maybe even impossible.
no it hasnt been shown to be curable in vitro even in micro prop. im doing the same thing im doing tissue cultures this summer and am going to get set up to do micro prop as well. there was some studies showing that cryogenic freezing of some plants apical meristem cells before culturing cleared it. different plant. i dont know if cannabis will react to cryogenic freezing well. there was another phytoplasma study where,4 more interestingly they heat treated the stems before making explants and had some success too.definitely some interesting thought...
http://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=ppj.2011.161.167
if it is phytoplasmas, it will show up in the DNA analysis. And if it is phytoplasmas, just like if it's viral, it should be curable in vitro. We're about to try a micropropagation technique with some very old seedlings so we might also see what kind of sterilization happens with infected tissue.
so under a scope I didn't see any identifiable signs of infection of any sort inside vascular tissue, even with various staining techniques. Looked at 5 samples from 3 plants (two infected one not) but no fungal cells, hyphae, or even spore were found. I did see a good amount of lignin though, that shit looks really trippy under a scope with UV stain on it.
next step is sterilizing the outer surface of the sample and seeing if anything will grow in petri dishes from inside the plant. The DNA work will actually have to take place at my facility so we are trying to get that done ASAP, there is a very big interest now to see if there is chromosomal damage to the dud plants, which would indicate there is most likely not a pathogenic infection as the dudding happens all at once and at times when there is great transitional stress on the plant. This "hormonal collapse" seems likely given the extreme conditions our plants are grown under, with unnatural light cycles, highly aerated media, and a modified atmosphere that can contain overabundances of nitrogen, Co2, or oxygen depending on ventilation, air movement, and biomass inside the actual growroom.
this phenomenon is turning the heads of some very intelligent (albeit busy) people, and I can promise you there are scientific minds that are really digging for answers.
youll not get phytoplasma to culture in vitro but you can amplify the dna and run a pcr with the right primers. i think there are two known. im excited to see what you find.
I'll try to find out if we are going to do any PCR work but I do not think we are since the intention of the project is to record entire genomes...the lab I'm working with has a few phytoplasmas sequenced we can compare against but no one there seemed to think there was any indication of phytoplasma based on their experience with other plant species and a great diversity of phytoplasma species. Working with two PhDs, a post-grad working on his PhD, and a few badass post-grad interns that get to travel the world collecting different bacteria, fungi, and algae.
^^^ not 'proven.' 2 out of 4 positive but untreated control vines recovered also.
The percentage of plants treated with IBA that recovered "was not significantly higher than the percentage of naturally-recovered vines, further research is required..."
@We Solidarity any word on the test results?