Dark Purple Disease Affecting New Growth?

[browntrout]

Get yourself some Safers Insect soap and spray the entire plant on both sides of the leaves every 3 days. I've use this on broad and russet mites and it can be used in flower.

It works on the mites and the eggs on contact and will leave your plant mite free and healthy. I use to use forbid and avid and they work too, but I still had to spray it multiple

times. These are locally systemic, meaning they don't protect the new growth, but penetrate the leaves and stays locally. You also can't use these in flower.

Actually I've used this stuff previously on mites/aphids etc. with not much luck, Malathion worked much better for me. That is my experience.

 

[Jmaes Mabley]

Avid is a contact and translaminar miticide. Translaminar is a term that refers to insecticides/miticides that penetrate the leaf tissue and form a reservoir of active ingredient within the leaf. Avid generally provides up to 28 days of residual activity. The label rate for all mite species is 4 fl oz per 100 gal. Avid is active on the mobile life stages of mites, with no activity on eggs. Although the insecticide/miticide is slow acting, treated mites are immobilized after exposure.



Systemic insecticides are those in which the active ingredient is taken up, primarily by plant roots, and transported (translocated) to locations throughout the plant, such as growing points, where it can affect plant-feeding pests. Systemics move within the vascular tissues, either through the xylem (water-conducting tissue) or the phloem (food-conducting tissue) depending on the characteristics of the material. However, most systemic insecticides move up the plant (water-conducting tissue) with the transpiration stream. Systemic insecticides are most effective on insects with piercing—sucking mouthparts, such as aphids, whiteflies, mealybugs, and soft scales, because these insects feed within the vascular plant tissues. Most of the newer systemic insecticides have minimal if any activity on spider mites because spider mites remove plant chlorophyll (green pigment) and don’t feed within the vascular tissues.

Systemic insecticides may be applied directly to the growing medium, soil; or they can be sprayed onto plant leaves. Systemics applied to the growing medium and taken up by plant roots may in some cases provide up to 12 weeks of residual activity. However, they may take longer to be distributed throughout the plant. In contrast, systemics applied to plant foliage may provide up to 2 to 4 weeks of residual activity. Nonetheless, foliar-applied systemics provide quicker kill of target pests. In either case, systemics provide the plant with long-term protection from pest injury.

The water solubility of systemic insecticides deter-mines their movement within plants. Systemic insecticides, in general, are very water soluble (an exception is imidacloprid), which allows them to be taken up by plant roots or leaves. In addition, plants do not readily metabolize them. However, due to their high water solubility, they are subject to leaching and may potentially contaminate groundwater.

Systemic insecticides should be applied when plants have an extensive, well-established root system and when they are actively growing. This leads to greater uptake of the active ingredient through the vascular tissues. Applying systemic insecticides during warm, sunny days also leads to increased uptake of the active ingredient through the transpiration stream. In contrast, uptake is less in plants without well-established root systems. Also, high humidity and low light can lead to reduced uptake of systemic insecticides. Any delayed uptake of the active ingredient may result in the material’s taking longer to kill insect pests. Systemics are also more effective when plants are herbaceous rather than woody, particularly on stem-feeding insects such as aphids.

Some insecticides/miticides have translaminar, or local, systemic activity. These materials penetrate leaf tissues and form a reservoir of active ingredient within the leaf. This provides residual activity against certain foliar-feeding insects and mites. Insecticides/miticides with translaminar properties include aba-mectin (Avid), pyriproxyfen (Distance), chlorfenapyr (Pylon), spinosad (Conserve), and acephate (Orthene). In general, these types of materials are active against spider mites and/or leafminers. Because the active ingredient can move through plant tissues (that is, leaves), thorough spray coverage is less critical when using these materials to control spider mites, which normally feed on leaf undersides.

The benefits of using systemic insecticides include (1) plants are continuously protected throughout most of the growing season without the need for repeat applications, (2) these insecticides are not sus-ceptible to ultraviolet light degradation or "wash off" during watering, (3) there is less unsightly residue on foliage or flowers, and (4) harmful effects to workers and customers are minimal. A problem associated with systemic insecticides is that many have a single, or site-specific, mode of activity, which may lead to resistance. The selection pressure placed on pests from the continual use of systemic insecticides may result in the development of resistant genotypes. An exception to this situation is the insecticide Endeavor (pymetrozine), which has a broad, or physical mode, of activity. Endeavor kills aphids and whiteflies by blocking their stylet (feeding tube), thus preventing them from feeding. As a result, the insects starve.

Although systemic insecticides are generally considered less harmful to natural enemies, research has shown at specific predators such as Orius spp. that supplemental feed on plants may take up enough active ingredient to kill themselves.

Systemic insecticides can provide long-term control of insect pests without having to rely on regular spray applications. However, it is important to use proper insecticide stewardship to minimize the risk of insect populations’ developing resistance to currently available systemic materials.

Also many/most Insecticides wont work on Mites, as they are Arachnids. Not Insects. Unless they are formulated to kill both. Not many are.

 

[kalopatchkid]

I followed you here from IC.

FWIW, when I had this same issue a few years ago, I spent a while looking for bugs under my microscope and didnt find anything. So I'm not convinced it is broadmites.

It definitely seems to be making its way across the country. I stopped sharing clones shortly after I experienced it and havent seen the purple death in my garden since, but i still get other fungal issues occasionally due to the high humidity. I grow outdoor in pots, in Hawaii, where it is warm all year long.

It's not temperature or nutrient related...this thread could be about 7 pages shorter if people stopped insisting it was.
Someone on IC tried to get the University of Hawaii to look at it but they wouldnt touch anything cannabis related. Need to get a sample to a skilled plant pathologist in a rec state, so we can finally get a positive ID on this issue.

 

[PlumberSoCal]

Just think how much Milk it would take to Drench 50 nice plants. Especially when you have to make sure the Undersides of the leaves are the first to get drenched. Takes a lot of liquid. A lot. The whole plants literally has to be dripping. Undersides in particular.

True, but you mix at 20% and if it helps...

Improving Garden Soil: Milk and Molasses Magic – Mother Earth News

Do you know about the magic of milk and molasses in improving your garden? Yes, plain old milk of any kind – whole, 2%, raw, dried, skim or nonfat – is a miracle in the garden for plants, soil and compost. Molasses only boosts the benefits! Let’s see how and why they work.

www.motherearthnews.com

 

[Mr.jiujitsu]

I followed you here from IC.

FWIW, when I had this same issue a few years ago, I spent a while looking for bugs under my microscope and didnt find anything. So I'm not convinced it is broadmites.

It definitely seems to be making its way across the country. I stopped sharing clones shortly after I experienced it and havent seen the purple death in my garden since, but i still get other fungal issues occasionally due to the high humidity. I grow outdoor in pots, in Hawaii, where it is warm all year long.

It's not temperature or nutrient related...this thread could be about 7 pages shorter if people stopped insisting it was.
Someone on IC tried to get the University of Hawaii to look at it but they wouldnt touch anything cannabis related. Need to get a sample to a skilled plant pathologist in a rec state, so we can finally get a positive ID on this issue.

I’m with you on this

 

[Jmaes Mabley]

Im convinced what the photos show, and what Ive seen from my buddies stuff, it is Broadmites,/Phytoplasma, and if you don't have a really good scope, you wont see them. They can ride in the back of a spider mite theyre so small. Most say you need at least 100x microscope to see them, and then you wont always see them, because if they are in the nymph stage, they will be living inside the plant tissue, and invisible to a scope.

Ive also shown the photos to some very experienced growers in Cali and they also say it is Brodadmites. Gascanastan from Swami Organic Seeds also agrees, and is the 1st to suggest Broadmite Phytoplasma.

 

[Bobrown14]

Someone on IC tried to get the University of Hawaii to look at it but they wouldnt touch anything cannabis related. Need to get a sample to a skilled plant pathologist in a rec state, so we can finally get a positive ID on this issue.

The reason for the "more that arms length" on anything cannabis related at the university level is due to the fact that these State universities get a lot of FEDERAL funding for their state Ag Extension programs. The new Ag bill this year included Cannabis Sativa in the funding so maybe that created the loophole that state universities can drive thru and begin to start looking at cannabis related plant issues.

Try and revisit this, you may find more open minds.

This is also the likely reason Oregon and Washington State stopped doing soil samples for the general public. A soil lab and all the associated workers and scholars is a big chunk of change.

So yeah when you see the "cant touch" something its usually money talking. Look how much tax money goes into the Ag Bill. 867 BILLION is a shit ton of money.

 

[kalopatchkid]

Im convinced what the photos show, and what Ive seen from my buddies stuff, it is Broadmites,/Phytoplasma, and if you don't have a really good scope, you wont see them. They can ride in the back of a spider mite theyre so small. Most say you need at least 100x microscope to see them, and then you wont always see them, because if they are in the nymph stage, they will be living inside the plant tissue, and invisible to a scope.

Ive also shown the photos to some very experienced growers in Cali and they also say it is Brodadmites. Gascanastan from Swami Organic Seeds also agrees, and is the 1st to suggest Broadmite Phytoplasma.

I do have a good lab microscope and broad mites can get up to 0.2mm in size. I didn’t see anything when I had it. Also, broad mites were quite common in indoor gardens a few years back and there was not really any reports of purple new growth.

It takes a skilled plant pathologist that can look at a particular sequence of a plants rRNA to diagnose Phytoplasmas so it’s a lot more involved than looking at a photo of symptoms. I have leaned towards it being phytoplasma for a long time but as of yet no one has made an official, science backed diagnosis.

 

[sammy2]

Actually I've used this stuff previously on mites/aphids etc. with not much luck, Malathion worked much better for me. That is my experience.

I have been successful every time I use it and its saved my grow. You have to hit it every 3 days with complete coverage and use a good scope to monitor it progress. You also

don't have to wear protected clothing. I discovered broads in early flower and it save my ass and I had a successful harvest, I'm a believer.

 

[browntrout]

I do have a good lab microscope and broad mites can get up to 0.2mm in size. I didn’t see anything when I had it. Also, broad mites were quite common in indoor gardens a few years back and there was not really any reports of purple new growth.

It takes a skilled plant pathologist that can look at a particular sequence of a plants rRNA to diagnose Phytoplasmas so it’s a lot more involved than looking at a photo of symptoms. I have leaned towards it being phytoplasma for a long time but as of yet no one has made an official, science backed diagnosis.

I will say I only found 2 in an a half hour of scoping, one on white piece of plastic i left overnight with drying plant and the other on a fresh top. The second being found only near the new growth on top. I think the broads just follow the new growth?

Have all of your infected plants been in native soil, pots or a certain mix?

I certainly do not believe the broad mites are causing this severe of a reaction, of course there is something else at play.

Can anyone make anything of the two purple "spores" or "Fungi" looking things I took a photo of?

I've spoke with a number of folks with degrees/college etc. to no avail, certainly someone in horticultural pathology would be a better starting ground.

 

[browntrout]

I'd like to add that I revegged outdoor plants that had the purple issue, had some show up in the clones I took indoors but went away. Now I have clones from them outdoors in an area and do not have the purple issue at all.

For me the issue exists extensively less than 1000ft away in the bud garden and the smaller test garden with plants in ground and pots do not have this issue except for a couple in the ground that is only very minor purple flecks on a few branches.

 

[Woodscrew]

Just stopping in to say I have been told the University will not test this for me even though it’s legal here. I have referred some knowledgeable folks to this thread and am hopeful they will look into this and give us their thoughts. I was under the impression Broad mites could not overwinter in a cold climate like I have here and were mainly an indoor/greenhouse pest this far north. My plants have never been indoors or in a greenhouse and I live far from from any agricultural areas. Not saying it is impossible for it to be BM’s but I would think it highly unlikely in my case.

 

[browntrout]

Just stopping in to say I have been told the University will not test this for me even though it’s legal here. I have referred some knowledgeable folks to this thread and am hopeful they will look into this and give us their thoughts. I was under the impression Broad mites could not overwinter in a cold climate like I have here and were mainly an indoor/greenhouse pest this far north. My plants have never been indoors or in a greenhouse and I live far from from any agricultural areas. Not saying it is impossible for it to be BM’s but I would think it highly unlikely in my case.

What Latitude? I am at 45N.

 

[kalopatchkid]

A couple years ago, @by_stokes on IG had a strawberry banana cut suspected of TMV tested by Heather Vallier Ph.D of Crop Doctor Laboratory. She confirmed it was indeed Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
I just looked at her website cropdoctor.net and it doesnt mention anything about phytoplasma detection specifically but she sounds like a good place to start.

 

[Dirtbag]

A couple years ago, @by_stokes on IG had a strawberry banana cut suspected of TMV tested by Heather Vallier Ph.D of Crop Doctor Laboratory. She confirmed it was indeed Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
I just looked at her website cropdoctor.net and it doesnt mention anything about phytoplasma detection specifically but she sounds like a good place to start.

A friend of mine had a crop test positive for TMV in a lab assay as well. It does happen.

 

[Jmaes Mabley]

I will also say. Broadmites are not the only vector for Phytoplasma. Leafhoppers are probably a more common vector. Leafhopper bites the tissue, and its all but automatically infected, if the LH is carrying the bacteria. And any other bug, that can carry the bacteria.

Phytoplasma

Phytoplasmas may best be described as bacteria that have lost their cell walls. They are only enclosed by a thin membrane which makes them very pliable and able to assume a variety of shapes (think of a balloon filled with water that can be squeezed into different shapes). They exist exclusively in the phloem (the carbohydrate-conducting tissue of the plant) and are transferred from plant to plant by insect vectors, primarily leafhoppers. Since their discovery in the late 1960s, phytoplasmas have been found in hundreds of different plant species and cause a variety of diseases. Symptoms of infection may include yellowing, stunted growth and slow decline (particularly in association with many tree species), and abnormal growth such as proliferation (an abnormally large number) of stems and buds and vegetative growth (such as leaves) from floral parts (phyllody). Although some strains of phytoplasma are found only on one particular crop, others, such as the organism causing aster yellows, can infect a wide range of host species.

One of the major difficulties of working with phytoplasma is the inability to grow the organism in culture. This makes detection more difficult. Traditional techniques that rely on plant symptoms to determine infection are not always reliable. An excellent collaboration has been established between our lab at U. of Wisconsin-Madison and Dr. Ing-Ming Lee, USDA, Beltsville, Maryland relative to phytoplasmas in soybean. This collaboration has been extended to cover alfalfa disease problems. Dr. Lee is a leading researcher in the area of phytoplasma detection and taxonomy and has pioneered ground-breaking research in this area (Lee et al. 1998). Not only has Dr. Lee assisted in the establishment of phytoplasma detection and identification protocols at U. of Wisconsin-Madison, he has performed replicate experiments to confirm and validate results obtained in our laboratory.

A survey was conducted during September to November, 1998 to determine the incidence of phytoplasma in alfalfa plantings. Samples were obtained from fields near Arlington, Evansville, Marshfield, West Madison, Lancaster, Whitewater, Hancock and a growers field west of Madison. Samples consisted of growing tips from upper regions of plants. Samples were placed into labeled plastic bags and then placed in Styrofoam coolers for return to UW-Madison upon which samples were frozen at -20EC. Samples were processed by extraction of DNA using the protocol of (Zhang et al. 1998). This process separates the DNA (which contains the genes we are interested in) from the rest of the plant material. After the purified DNA was obtained, nested PCR (polymerase chain reaction) was carried out using two universal primer pairs according to the protocol of Gunderson and Lee (1996). The PCR process allows us to detect the DNA from only the phytoplasmas present in a sample and distinguishes phytoplasma DNA from all the other types of DNA present in the sample (such as plant, bacteria, and fungal DNA). This new technique (PCR) is costly and time-consuming, but allows us to detect organisms such as phytoplasmas in alfalfa (and other crops) which have probably been present in plantings for many years, but were very difficult to detect with traditional methods. For further classification of phytoplasmas, restriction enzyme digests were performed (the phytoplasma DNA was cut with enzymes) and comparison of RFLP (restriction fragment length polymorphisms) were made with known patterns described by Lee et al. (1998). In other words, after we cut the phytoplasma DNA with enzymes, the patterns that were produced were compared with patterns of other phytoplasmas from around the world to further identify what phytoplasmas we are dealing with in Wisconsin.

Results indicated that phytoplasmas or organisms closely related to phytoplasmas are widespread in alfalfa plantings in Wisconsin (see Table 1).

Table 1. Incidence of samples PCR-positive for phytoplasma in Wisconsin.

Location	Number of samples	Number of samples PCR-positive for phytoplasma	Percent of samples PCR-positive for phytoplasma
Arlington	6	4	67
Evansville	6	1	17
Marshfield	7	2	29
West Madison	21	0	0
Lancaster	3	2	67
Whitewater	2	1	50
Hancock	3	0	0
Grower=s field west of Madison	3	2	67
TOTAL	51	12	23.5

 

[browntrout]

I previously mixed up the bag of Nova, so I applied some malathion and then Nova via spray a few days ago. The girls definitely look better for the most part, I would say 1/3 have centers on the new growth that are no longer purple, some have no change however. It also helped keep this dirty strain of PM we are getting at bay.

Today I sprayed them with a homebrew version of Cyclone, 1% milk, water and 1g/L citric acid.

At the end of the day this plot has become a test zone more than anything.

 

[Smokerheat]

I’m having the same issue with plant I moved outdoor from indoor with no previous purpling. Then took cuttings off it and moved them back indoor. Still very dark purple growth tips.
I was talking to someone with a PhD in plant science she said to send a few pics so I will see what she says.

 

[PlumberSoCal]

I don't ever want to see this shit in my plants. Makes me think of nuking everything in sulfur and neem year round.

 

[RLB]

I’m having the same issue with plant I moved outdoor from indoor with no previous purpling. Then took cuttings off it and moved them back indoor. Still very dark purple growth tips.
I was talking to someone with a PhD in plant science she said to send a few pics so I will see what she says.

View attachment 887710View attachment 887711

Please keep us posted on what she finds.