Fusarium passed to cuttings?

If you have a mother plant that is showing symptoms of a Fusarium infection, is it possible that clones from that plant will carry the disease systemically?... I have cut the stems open and there is no sign of internal infection... only diseased brown roots!

I think it can be passed from a mother to cuts

uh oh not what I want to hear...

Actinovate for the win.

Fusarium is nasty, and almost impossible to get rid of without culling/burning everything, sanitizing room if indoors, and starting over. It is also contagious to humans who have a compromised immune system, and can be fatal.

"Fusarium Wilt is by far one of the hardest things for cannabis to overcome, if it ever does overcome it. Your plant health, environment and strain have a lot to do with weather or not Fusarium wilt will take over your plants. This pathogen mainly affects cannabis and hemp family, but can affect other plants but does not show the damaging effect it has on cannabis, like it does on other kinds of plants. This pathogen was breed specifically to attack wild cannabis plants and growers who grow there plants outdoors’. There is no form of organic control for this type, reason for this is, because the fungus is so strong and not susceptible to much of anything unless you get it right when it starts, if you do not get it in time, it thrives in the plants and consumes and kills the plants. There is only a few ways to control this fungus, one is to fumigate the area you are growing in killing the pathogen in the soil while it is dormant, so when you grow in this area again, your plants are much less likely to get it, the only other way your plants could get this if not from the soil, is from airborne spores get in through open wounds on your plants leaves, stems and stalks. Plants that produced seeds when it was infected with Fusarium wilt should not be used, as the pathogen stays dormant on the seed and attacks it when the seedling emerges and causing the “damping off” effect and thus killing the seedling before it even has a chance to grow it’s real first set of leaves. Acidic soil helps boost Fusarium wilt. Stay away from acidic soils .Counteract this by using dolomite lime, or green sand Using potassium and calcium enriched organic nutrients can help fight off and prevent Fusarium wilt, excessive amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus can speed up Fusarium wilt.

If your plant gets this it will surely die, the only thing you can do is try to reduce the destruction by foliar feeding areas that are not infected, cut off infected areas discard them away from your growing areas and treat the wound with h202 (Hydrogen Peroxide).
Making sure you clean your tools afterwards is important. Treating with fungicides will not work in controlling this."
It is transferable to cuts and seeds. Seeds from fusarium infected plants should be destroyed.

Prevention is the key. Once you have it, it's pretty much "game over".
Immune system boosters, like aspirin, chitosan, etc, will help prevent it.

You can always burn everything like retro suggests. However, that wouldn't be the "fight to the bell is rung" way. That would be the "I can't do it. It is too hard. I want to quit" way.

Try some Actinovate and see what happens. Fight the good fight.

iTarzan said:

You can always burn everything like retro suggests. However, that wouldn't be the "fight to the bell is rung" way. That would be the "I can't do it. It is too hard. I want to quit" way.

Try some Actinovate and see what happens. Fight the good fight.

Click to expand...

Do you have to work hard at being a douche-bag/troll, or does it just come naturally?
No need to respond. I and all the people who have you on ignore already know the answer.
Actinovate is a beneficial bacterium, that populates the root system, and acts as a preventative. Since he already has fusarium in his mother plant, it is too late to populate the roots to prevent fusarium. That should be done from seed/germination. You can get a similar result by using trichoderma (naturally present in coco), or/and mycorrhizae. Trichoderma eat fusarium fungi.
By the way, I use Actinovate as a preventative. Not going to cure a plant that already has fusarium.

RetroGrow said:

Actinovate is a beneficial bacterium, that populates the root system, and acts as a preventative.

Click to expand...

You make it so easy to discredit you.

The company, which has educated horticulturists at it's helm, gives FOLIAR application instructions also.

Let us see what the company says about this.

A one-stop fungus fighter for gardens, lawns & hydroponics! Actinovate works from root to leaf with a concentrated beneficial microorganism (Streptomyces lydicus) that establishes itself on plants’ roots and leaves. This water-soluble organic fungicide knocks back diseases that attack your lawn, ornamentals and even edibles yet is proven to be safe around pets, people and the environment. OMRI Listed for use in organic production.

Hmmm... It says it works root to leaf. So you are wrong.

It says it knocks back diseases. You can only "knock back" something already established. So you are wrong again.

Retro you are ICMag's Minister of Misinformation. Congrats on your well earned position.

I don't have the red stems and the wilting is not severe, but I have chronic root rot!

so I may have made an incorrect diagnosis, then again my soil is so full of different beneficials that it may be partially suppressing the disease!

hampy said:

And then their clones rotted. Well, half of them anyway, after a rooting period more than twice as long as my regular one-week wonders, with underwarmth and perfect conditions.

Then it really started to sink in that something serious was up,...

Click to expand...

I haven't had a successful grow in almost three years now. I have little doubt that it is fusarium, though I never took samples to be lab tested.

One of the first things to go was my cloning. For a number of years my home built spray cloners popped out happy rooted cuttings like clockwork. Then the root production started faltering and unrooted stems began succumbing to something that turned them to a soft brown mush. I'd lift the cloner lid, and while watching underneath give it a gentle shake. Afflicted stems would wriggle like soft noodles. Above the cloner lid, plants first showed distress by a yellow-browning and softening of the youngest leaflets. Some where in this time a few mature flowering plants showed the sudden symptoms of wilting bleached tops... and death.

The adult infections didn't increase for a long while but cloning became nearly impossible. I'd bleach cloners, and run them with bleach in the water. Tried earthworm castings in the water. Mycorrhiza (Great White) on the stems gave me some beautiful lush white roots a few times. Bubble cloners didn't go. Cleaned with Oxidate and Physan. A little success with individual cups of perlite, but it was not enough. The infection now decimated several crops near harvest. A brand new cloner got the last batch of rooted cuttings, from plants from seeds, but then no more.

I had gotten really meticulous with my sterile cloning technique, but still lost most all. Then I had a run of plants from seed and had been keeping a group of males in their beer cups on the veg table while their sisters were put into larger pots in another room. The root bound males were getting along, when I thought they might be showing a slight distress, a slight mottled interveinal chlorosis. But they seemed to be doing OK, and I shrugged it off. Then I took cuttings from everybody and into the cloner. A week later I lifted the lid and gave it a shake. All those male cuttings did the pale brown noodle shake. It was then I realized that infected plants were bringing the pathogen into the cloner. It didn't matter how sterile my razor blade was when the cutting's vascular tissue already contained the pathogen.

It makes total sense. A water borne root infecting fungus that enters the plant and travels up the vascular tissue. It's going to be in some of your cuttings. Maybe not all. Many articles mention fusarium sometimes only killing certain branches of a plant. Think of that old grade school demo of slitting a celery stem halfway and placing the two separated ends in glasses of different colored solution, giving you a bi-colored leafy celery top.

This disease doesn't fully manifest itself until after a plant is well into flowering. So it may not obviously manifest itself in a veg state mother. And you mention soil with beneficials. I was growing in coco coir in flood trays (perfect for infection) using Maxibloom salts.

My plants showed poor root development, but never showed the swelling or discoloration of the stem base described in many articles. The infected stems of cuttings became soft, brownish and mushy, but they weren't covered with a slime or anything. It was the plant tissue which was soft. I could test stems by rubbing them with the edge of a toothpick. With healthy stems the toothpick bounced along a firm green stem. When infected it was like a push-broom moving an inch of wet snow on a concrete slab.

The farm has a interesting fusarium thread, "Welcome to the Fungal,..."

Heavy story man, thanx for the reply.... Did you try shutting down and completely sterilizing the whole place and then starting from seed again?

moses wellfleet said:

Did you try shutting down and completely sterilizing the whole place and then starting from seed again?

Click to expand...

Several times. After a long break, I've started plants from seed in soil with Root Shield micorrhiza. They're almost ready for the flower room.

I've read comments from people who've fought this thing back. Either go heavy on the beneficials, especially innoculants specifically for fusarium, or use an inert growing medium with constant chlorine in your reservoir.

Did you also get it from traded clones?... How did you diagnose it?

moses wellfleet said:

Did you also get it from traded clones?... How did you diagnose it?

Click to expand...

Trying to understand why my plants were suddenly bleaching, withering, and dying near harvest, I perused the photo collections of plant problems. Looking at Stitch's Complete Guide to Sick Plants, for some reason the lighting on the fusarium photo made it look to me like the plants had turned almost black... but my afflicted plants were bleached almost white. So I thought that it was some other fungal problem like a variant of botrytis, or maybe the spore laden leaf pile outside my grow space was innoculating my grow room. So I tried different sprays, and trimming, and cleaned up the outside landscaping plant scene. But my experiences with botrytis were that a specific section of dense bud turns grey and soft. This infection was suddenly taking out entire top sections of plants in one lights-on cycle. And the early stages showed up in the leaves.

My reading kept pointing to fusarium. When I looked at Stitch's photos again I recognised that her first picture was side lit and the darkness was only shadow. Other photos on the web looked like my plants too. On all my dying plants with wilted, crisped, and bleached tops, I never saw anything that looked like spore producing structures. From what I've read, other grower's lab testing shows up Fusarium solani or Fusarium oxysporum. The fusarium group has over a thousand species by some accounts.

As to how I aquired this pathogen, I could have brought it inside from my outside gardening efforts. Nursery purchased tomato plants, peppers and eggplants commonly carry the pathogen. But my veggy gardens have never shown this infection. I haven't acquired clones from anywhere.

I've only grown from seed... and I suspect that's where it came from. An infected plant will leave spores on the surface of its seeds. I read of fusarium being a plague in many commercial grow operations in Europe. People are running constant levels of fungicide in their reservoirs trying to keep it at bay. Before this started there was a plant from seed I had which went into flower and then just stopped developing, with odd yellowing of young tissues. It freaked me out and was removed from the grow room. Maybe that was the plant? I can never know for certain. All the seeds I pop from now on will be initially soaked in water containing fusarium fighting beneficials. I might try some with an initial rinse in Physan also and see if that affects germination.

My web searches became much more productive when I dropped the term "wilt", and just used "fusarium".

2nd edit; I read that some kinds of fusarium can grow in carpet or in wall materials. In "Welcome to the Fungal" there is mention of fusarium being a problem for growers in old houses. I live in a very old house, so the fusarium may have been there when I moved in. There have been times when ventilation in my grow was inadequate and the humidity spiked so that ceiling and walls were wet. Even had mold growing on the wooden ceiling so that I ended up spraying it with Lysol. So that could have been the start to my problem. At the very least I need to seal the ceiling boards with an antifungal primer. Considering painting it first with a copper-sulphate solution (root killer).

RootShield is supposed to protect your plants from getting infected but I have not been able to get any feed back from anybody using this to get any idea if it really does work. I have some type of root rot also and have been fighting this for a couple years, one day I read about making bennie tea from worm castings, Botanicare ZHO and General Hydroponics Ancient Forrest as well as bennies for mushroom cultivators my plants are turning around from the tea. I can only afford ZHO and decent quality worm castings but the bennies in the worm castings and ZHO seem to be winning the battle ( I grow in dirt ).

The gift that never stops giving, compliments of Dick and Ronnie.
Can't help but wonder what Cheney/Bush contribution to the effort would have been.
Appropriate legacy to those who never believed in freedom or the market.

From Wiki under the heading of Biological Warfare:
" the fungus has been implicated in the birth of 31 anencephalic children in the Rio Grande region of Texas in 1991[citation needed], the loss of palm trees in Los Angeles, and eye infections from contact lens solutions."

iTarzan said:

You make it so easy to discredit you.

The company, which has educated horticulturists at it's helm, gives FOLIAR application instructions also.

Let us see what the company says about this.

A one-stop fungus fighter for gardens, lawns & hydroponics! Actinovate works from root to leaf with a concentrated beneficial microorganism (Streptomyces lydicus) that establishes itself on plants’ roots and leaves. This water-soluble organic fungicide knocks back diseases that attack your lawn, ornamentals and even edibles yet is proven to be safe around pets, people and the environment. OMRI Listed for use in organic production.

Hmmm... It says it works root to leaf. So you are wrong.

It says it knocks back diseases. You can only "knock back" something already established. So you are wrong again.

Retro you are ICMag's Minister of Misinformation. Congrats on your well earned position.

Click to expand...

Hey trolling boy, do you really think you just proved something by posting what a manufacturer advertising their product says? And do you know anything about fusarium at all? From your comments, apparently not. Fusarium starts in the root system, and that's where it has to be prevented. Once the whole plant has it, it's over. You can't fix it. Actinovate is used to inoculate the roots, preventing the bacterium from being established. Trichoderma will do the same thing, as it is a predator fungus which will destroy fusarium and other fungi. One way to stop these type infections is to start seeds in Lightwarrior Seed Starter Mix, which inoculates the roots with mycorrhizae. After plants develop a root system, transplant to coco, where the trichoderma in the coco will also colonize the roots, working symbiotically with the mycorrhizae. This will prevent root rot diseases, as will other teas and bennies. Actinovate is just another beneficial which does the same thing. It will prevent infections of the root system. Once the entire plant is infected, it's too late to "cure" it.
Now, why don't you run along. I'm sure you have other threads to troll, and other fights to pick. Picking fights is your specialty. You do it in the MMA thread, where you called Shrews "chicken legs", even though you don't know him. You do it in the NFL thread, where you are picking fights. Half the people in the MMA thread have you on ignore because you are so obnoxious. You act like a petulant child. You have been trolling me incessantly. Eventually it will get you kicked. I'm just going to neg rep you every time you start shit. Try to act like a man, instead of a little girl.

I have not experienced the wilt and death of the plants that other people speak of, only root rot that is leading to reduced yields. Could the beneficials in my organic soil be preventing the disease from having a fatal effect?

One thing I did figure out is if I feed normal high dosage of nutes that I would give in bloom, guano, molasses, etc. Then the disease seems to go crazy. If I cut back on nutes then it is greatly reduced.