Dud Identification Collective Knowledge.

[Gry]

this one I would really like to learn more about from a distance !

 

[mojave green]

the mites were persistent but easy enough to rid myself of,

sounds like an oxymoron.

you forgot to mention what method(s) did you employ to rid yourself of them?

 

[CCfromTCC]

your attitude is a testament to the strength of your character. thanks for starting this thread.

what little i know is already up there in my post.

i did get dud adub and dubtech clones from a vendor who used to frequent these boards and who well may be lying in wait here still. without knowing that from the handful he gave me, i propped them out for several generations before flowering them, so i am very skeptical of the "cloning away from" argument that this practice will fix things. though i was unaware of it at the time as i was of the syndrome, the cuts also carried some tarsonemid class mite or another—broad, cyclamen, hemp russet.

the mites were persistent but easy enough to rid myself of, i was never able to bring the plants back, try though i did. if this were the whole of my story, i would be quick to cast my lot with them that blame the broad mites and to chalk the loss of the plants vigor, terps, and trichs to residual damage from the mites. however, in the time that i was tryong to clone away from dud, after i am 100 the mites had been eradicated, i watched the syndrome spread to other plants. the second i observed and logged this, i culled the lot of them. if you are seeing this in your plants, get them out of your room asap if you want to keep the other strains you've got.

the best practices are nothing magical. quarantine, cull, and scrub.

never introduce anything to your room that you have not sequestered in a safe space and observed for a period of at least two weeks.

promptly remove and destroy any plants you find to be affected.

be immaculate. i've said it before and stand by it unequivocally. OCD is actually a desirable trait in a grower.

that's all i've got. i'm here to learn as much as the next guy.

so you feel cuts/clones has caught this dud thing from mites/bugs/etc..???
do u think the dud thing is caused by a virus the bugs left behind??
after u get ur plants bug free you say they can still spread this dud on to normal plants in ur rooms...

if the whole dud thing is just a virus getting spread around by infected/infested clones i would believe the best bet is to get cuts from honest people who can say the havnt had bug problems or duds in their rooms since it seems a dud pest free plant can transfer whatever it has(virus?) to a nornal other plant
.. i find it weird myself that duds pop up around dub,dub crosses etc.. i feel there must be some sort of genenic trait in those genes to make dud activate and come alive to wreck people grows

 

[Hammerhead]

IMO if you have duds,bugs the entire crop every strain in the room needs to be destroyed. completely clean the rooms and all equipment. Put preventive measure so they cant ever enter again. Don't get cuts from cup events. If you have positive proof the source is good that's OK but still never put it with your plants for weeks. you must inspect it many times even the soil.

If all growers where anal about bugs we would not have so many issue with mites. Duping a crop with even 1 mite is the right thing to do. Man up and take the loss then start over..

 

[CCfromTCC]

just trying to understand what most (cause not everyone will agree) people believe is causing the dud issue.. from my reading i understand its basiclly mites/bugs giving plants viruses, which than can be transfered from plant to plant in a unknown style..

besides bubb and strains with bub in it has it started on a different set of genetics?

 

[Hammerhead]

Some have said they seen it in other strains??

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

your attitude is a testament to the strength of your character. thanks for starting this thread.

what little i know is already up there in my post.

i did get dud adub and dubtech clones from a vendor who used to frequent these boards and who well may be lying in wait here still. without knowing that from the handful he gave me, i propped them out for several generations before flowering them, so i am very skeptical of the "cloning away from" argument that this practice will fix things. though i was unaware of it at the time as i was of the syndrome, the cuts also carried some tarsonemid class mite or another—broad, cyclamen, hemp russet.

the mites were persistent but easy enough to rid myself of, i was never able to bring the plants back, try though i did. if this were the whole of my story, i would be quick to cast my lot with them that blame the broad mites and to chalk the loss of the plants vigor, terps, and trichs to residual damage from the mites. however, in the time that i was tryong to clone away from dud, after i am 100 the mites had been eradicated, i watched the syndrome spread to other plants. the second i observed and logged this, i culled the lot of them. if you are seeing this in your plants, get them out of your room asap if you want to keep the other strains you've got.

I am not sure what the real core problem was with your plants, broad, cyclamen, hemp russet mites? Or a disese they spread?
If mites are all 100% eliminated, what is the vector for additional spread? I might guess that the mites before they were eliminated spread a virus, bacteria, fungus to all the other plants but the symptoms were not evident yet? But it is a guess, I have no idea of the time frame or if the pests were really 100% eliminated.
It is not easy to understand if cloning the most vigorus parts of plants repeatedly will help restore vigor if you do not know the core problem, it will not help get rid of viruses or other disease. It will help if the problem is a phenotypical expression of lack of vigor and not disease or pests. I am not say what it was I am saying between lack of vigor, pests and disease there is a lot of overlap that needs to be unravelled before you get to the core cause. Until then maybe you need to cull and eliminate anthing suspect if that is all that works for you. The problem for most is deciding not only what is a dud, but what to do with it if it is important for them. The first step would be a sub category for all duds, that listed why or a list for suspected whys, like which of the mites, viruses, bacteria, fungus.
I have my doubts about a dud plant being able to spread its dudness to other plants without a vector like pests. It can happen with viruses with direct contact of plant sap from one plant to another via two plants or pollen, or tools or humans but most is vectored by pests, like insects or nematodes.
From wickpedia:
Insects
Plant viruses need to be transmitted by a vector, most often insects such as leafhoppers. One class of viruses, the Rhabdoviridae, has been proposed to actually be insect viruses that have evolved to replicate in plants. The chosen insect vector of a plant virus will often be the determining factor in that virus's host range: it can only infect plants that the insect vector feeds upon. This was shown in part when the old world white fly made it to the USA, where it transferred many plant viruses into new hosts.Depending on the way they are transmitted, plant viruses are classified as non-persistent, semi-persistent and persistent. In non-persistent transmission, viruses become attached to the distal tip of the stylet of the insect and on the next plant it feeds on, it inoculates it with the virus.[5] Semi-persistent viral transmission involves the virus entering the foregut of the insect. Those viruses that manage to pass through the gut into the haemolymph and then to the salivary glands are known as persistent[disambiguation needed]. There are two sub-classes of persistent viruses: propagative and circulative. Propagative viruses are able to replicate in both the plant and the insect (and may have originally been insect viruses), whereas circulative can not. Circulative viruses are protected inside aphids by the chaperone protein symbionin produced by bacterial symbionts.Many plant viruses encode within their genome polypeptides with domains essential for transmission by insects. In non-persistent and semi-persistent viruses, these domains are in the coat protein and another protein known as the helper component. A bridging hypothesis has been proposed to explain how these proteins aid in insect-mediated viral transmission. The helper component will bind to the specific domain of the coat protein, and then the insect mouthparts — creating a bridge. In persistent propagative viruses, such as tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), there is often a lipid coat surrounding the proteins that is not seen in other classes of plant viruses. In the case of TSWV, 2 viral proteins are expressed in this lipid envelope. It has been proposed that the viruses bind via these proteins and are then taken into the insect cell by receptor-mediated endocytosis.

Nematodes
Soil-borne nematodes also have been shown to transmit viruses.[6] They acquire and transmit them by feeding on infected roots. Viruses can be transmitted both non-persistently and persistently, but there is no evidence of viruses being able to replicate in nematodes. The virions attach to the stylet (feeding organ) or to the gut when they feed on an infected plant and can then detach during later feeding to infect other plants. Examples of viruses that can be transmitted by nematodes include tobacco ringspot virus and tobacco rattle virus.

Plasmodiophorids
A number of virus genera are transmitted, both persistently and non-persistently, by soil borne zoosporic protozoa. These protozoa are not phytopathogenic themselves, but parasitic. Transmission of the virus takes place when they become associated with the plant roots. Examples include Polymyxa graminis, which has been shown to transmit plant viral diseases in cereal crops and Polymyxa betae which transmits Beet necrotic yellow vein virus. Plasmodiophorids also create wounds in the plant's root through which other viruses can enter.

Seed and pollen borne viruses
Plant virus transmission from generation to generation occurs in about 20% of plant viruses. When viruses are transmitted by seeds, the seed is infected in the generative cells and the virus is maintained in the germ cells and sometimes, but less often, in the seed coat. When the growth and development of plants is delayed because of situations like unfavourable weather, there is an increase in the amount of virus infections in seeds. There does not seem to be a correlation between the location of the seed on the plant and its chances of being infected. Little is known about the mechanisms involved in the transmission of plant viruses via seeds, although it is known that it is environmentally influenced and that seed transmission occurs because of a direct invasion of the embryo via the ovule or by an indirect route with an attack on the embryo mediated by infected gametes. These processes can occur concurrently or separately depending on the host plant. It is unknown how the virus is able to directly invade and cross the embryo and boundary between the parental and progeny generations in the ovule. Many plants species can be infected through seeds including but not limited to the families Leguminosae, Solanaceae, Compositae, Rosaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Gramineae. Bean common mosaic virus is transmitted through seeds. Cannabis transmits viruses in seeds. HSV, AMV, CMV, ArMV, HMV, are all known to be transmitted via seeds, many more are probable.
-SamS

the best practices are nothing magical. quarantine, cull, and scrub.

never introduce anything to your room that you have not sequestered in a safe space and observed for a period of at least two weeks.

promptly remove and destroy any plants you find to be affected.

be immaculate. i've said it before and stand by it unequivocally. OCD is actually a desirable trait in a grower.

that's all i've got. i'm here to learn as much as the next guy.

x

 

[RetroGrow]

the cuts also carried some tarsonemid class mite or another—broad, cyclamen, hemp russet.

the mites were persistent but easy enough to rid myself of, i was never able to bring the plants back, try though i did.

So you did have mites, but didn't identify which ones? There's a difference between Broads, Cyclamens and Russetts. If you look at them through a microscope, you can see the difference. How did you "eradicate" them? My experience with broads is, even when you have cleaned/sterilized everything, and did everything you could to get rid of them, they have a remarkable ability to survive and come back. How can you be sure there weren't residual mites, or plants that were injected with the toxins before the mites were killed. Mite toxins will endure in plants for quite some time.
Anyway, if it's something different, something "new" having nothing to do with mite toxins, then it seems there should be a laboratory test to identify it.

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

So you did have mites, but didn't identify which ones? There's a difference between Broads, Cyclamens and Russetts. If you look at them through a microscope, you can see the difference. How did you "eradicate" them? My experience with broads is, even when you have cleaned/sterilized everything, and did everything you could to get rid of them, they have a remarkable ability to survive and come back. How can you be sure there weren't residual mites, or plants that were injected with the toxins before the mites were killed. Mite toxins will endure in plants for quite some time.
Anyway, if it's something different, something "new" having nothing to do with mite toxins, then it seems there should be a laboratory test to identify it.

When you say mite toxin do you mean a virus, bacteria, fungus or other disease or just a non-living toxin that causes problems? If just a toxin then it can not spread without a pest to put it there, right?
Unless you make clone from a dud, then it would have the toxin?
-SamS

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

Hey Grey, do you think this is what Sour Dub was susceptible to early on?
And could tissue culturing (like APE was doing) be helpful in isolating non affected areas?

Oh yeah SamS, I wanted to mention that I came across some really cool video and film of QSMS on you tube..Epic. Not sure if you already been there done that but I recall you dug em.

FYI, I and friends were in SF in early 65 and bought a few keys of Mexico's finest from QSMS, they had a phone number you called and they delivered to you on the street. Prices were higher then down in San Diego, but we were in SF so we used them. I am not going to tell you the whole story, we were young and dumb, and spent a night in the Reno jail for "disturbing the peace", got out, grabbed all our stash, luckily hidden in the desert, and got out of town.
We had heard that Cannabis was rare and expensive in Reno, now we all knew why...
QSMS music was a favorite of mine, that is for sure...

Can't you see that flash of fire ten times brighter than the day?
And behold a mighty city broken in the dust again, Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again......

-SamS

 

[RetroGrow]

When you say mite toxin do you mean a virus, bacteria, fungus or other disease or just a non-living toxin that causes problems? If just a toxin then it can not spread without a pest to put it there, right?
Unless you make clone from a dud, then it would have the toxin?
-SamS

Tarsonemid mites include broad & cyclamen mites. These mites inject a toxin into the plants from their saliva. The damage they do to plants isn't from how much of the plant they consume, it's from the toxins, which can linger in the plants even after the mites have been "eradicated". These toxins cause "dudding" of the plant, which can show as twisted, stunted growth in severe cases, but sometimes, the plants look almost normal but have no smell or potency. So, yes, the toxins come from the pests. The thing about broad/cyclamen mites is, even after treating, they have a way of coming back once they are in your environment, so there is always the question of 100% eradication.
There may be a totally different kind of "dudding" that I'm not aware of/haven't seen/is new. It seems the only way we will know is if some suspect plants are tested.
It's possible some virus is being vectored by broad or cyclamen mites, but I haven't read anything about it.
Perhaps the DEA has weaponized pests that infect cannabis. I wouldn't put it past them.

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

Tarsonemid mites include broad & cyclamen mites. These mites inject a toxin into the plants from their saliva. The damage they do to plants isn't from how much of the plant they consume, it's from the toxins, which can linger in the plants even after the mites have been "eradicated". These toxins cause "dudding" of the plant, which can show as twisted, stunted growth in severe cases, but sometimes, the plants look almost normal but have no smell or potency. So, yes, the toxins come from the pests. The thing about broad/cyclamen mites is, even after treating, they have a way of coming back once they are in your environment, so there is always the question of 100% eradication.
There may be a totally different kind of "dudding" that I'm not aware of/haven't seen/is new. It seems the only way we will know is if some suspect plants are tested.
It's possible some virus is being vectored by broad or cyclamen mites, but I haven't read anything about it.
Perhaps the DEA has weaponized pests that infect cannabis. I wouldn't put it past them.

What is the toxin, has it been identified? It is not alive?
"Damage is caused by secretion of a plant growth regulator or toxin as the mite feeds"
Sounds like even the enthomologists have no idea if it is a toxin or plant growth regulator that they pass into plants while feeding. Maybe if we knew it would help control or to eliminate the toxin/plant growth regulator? I did a quick search online and in my pest books, no help at all.
-SamS

 

[high life 45]

This is what I experienced as broad mite damage, different than duds IMO. Also anytime that I have seen any sort of TMV like damage on a cannabis plant on the west coast. It has always been from BM's. I have upset many people by maintaining this belief, and I am not saying that cannabis cant get tmv, but I have yet to not find bm eggs when there was mosaic looking damage in person.

Broad mite toxin may cause duds, and bms might also infect your plants with a virus or bacteria that may cause duds.
Yet I havent seen this in the past or with any of my other strains currently besides the cup GG4. I have seen damage from toxins and it is visually apparent and much different than the dud' I am seeing now.

I also have a blue dream clone from the cup, directly next to a gg4 in the same container, also from standard seeds and it is not showing any strange growth such as the pic below.

SAM what is qsms?

 

[EclipseFour20]

Another possible cause--maybe we have a "chimeric plant reaction"? (think multiple DNA...not variegated leaves as demonstrated by TMV).

"A plant is said to be a chimera when cells of more than one genotype (genetic makeup) are found growing adjacent in the tissues of that plant...

Chimeras arise when a cell undergoes mutation. This mutation may be spontaneous or it may be induced by irradiation or treatment with chemical mutagens. If the cell which mutates is located near the crest of the apical dome, then all other cells which are produced by division from it will also be the mutated type. The result will be cells of different genotypes growing adjacent in a plant tissue, the definition of a chimera...

While variegation represents a very visible manifestation of chimeras, it should be apparent from the previous discussion that in theory a plant could be a chimera for virtually any trait. Other frequent chimeras involve loss of epidermal appendages (thornlessness in blackberries, "fuzzless" peaches), alteration in bract color in poinsettia, and various petal or flower color patterns in carnation and chrysanthemum."

Source: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/tisscult/chimeras/chimeralec/chimeras.html

Irradiation (similar to heat treatment?)
Chemical mutagens (reaction to chem/synthetics?)
Can it be reversed? It seems that once a plant is chimeric, it remains chimeric and the traits can be passed to future cuttings.

Cheers!

BTW--humans have experienced chimera (rare?...yes). From Wiki: "Lydia Fairchild was pregnant with her third child when she and the father of her children, Jamie Townsend, separated. When Fairchild applied for welfare support in 2002, she was requested to provide DNA evidence that Townsend was the father of her children. While the results showed Townsend was certainly the father of the children, the DNA tests indicated that she was not their mother."

 

[Bigbux82]

poetry man..pure poetry

 

[Bigbux82]

cooking your plants for 3 days at 900° got you down? has the EPA declared your grow a superfund site on account of all the toxic chemicals you've dumped on it? is the strongest smelling thing in your garden the stink stink coming of your gym socks? don't despair just yet, because i've found a cure for duds. it's called BRAWNDO and it's packed with electrolytes, the stuff that plants crave. don't give your plants water. water comes from the toilet. and have you ever seen a plant growing out of the toilet?!?!?!

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i kid. i kid. was just watching idiocracy last night, and i couldn't help myself. it actually reminds me a lot of the way random ideas have a way of going from wild conjecture to absolute truth in a matter of seconds on sites like these.

[/rant]

morning gang. apparently i slept through the contentious part of this thread. by the time i got here the cleaning crew had already come around and done their thing. it's just as well too, since this isn't the venue where i'd like to answer all the personal insults.

first off, thanks to sam skunk for weighing in. it's refreshing to have a giant like yourself opine on the problems we are dealing with down in the trenches. it also validates just how serious this damn thing is.

as it pertains to this plague of duds, i do not pretend to understand this phenomenon any better than the next person. and, absent some credible empirical data and results that can be duplicated, i would regard anyone who claims that they have a handle on it with great suspicion. not surprisingly, there are such individuals who let their own egos or personal agendas trump reason. sadly, there are others who are so eager and desperate to find a solution to this thing that they line up to buy what these charlatans are selling. it's very much akin and about as upsetting as these "faith healers" and other quacks who put themselves out there as a valid alternative to medical science so that truly desperate people with grave illnesses and nothing to lose but their savings might jump on board for what they are doing.

biological supplements, wide spectrum miticidal regimens, og biowar, calcium thiosulfate, cooking your plants to death or very nearly so, tmv immunoassays, voodoo hexes, and now, botanical oils, because they're "too complex for viruses." to these all i can say is child please. at least, after a long and storied history of being so cavalier and cocksure about this thing and laughing at those who don't jump on the latest thing you profer, at least admitting it's a worldwide phenom that nobody quite comprehends is a giant step in the direction of progress. bravo to the lot of you who have given up trying to convince the rest of us that you have it all under control and that rest of us are very stupid for not heeding your advice as we would the Word of Dog.

looking through these threads, it seems like everyone weighing in falls into one of a handful of basic types. for me, it's easy to empathize with all of them, the one mentioned above notwithstanding.

those who have never experienced this thing first hand are incredulous. i know i was. didn't believe it was a real thing. figured it was some mistake or another on the part of the growers in question. there is just no way imaginable that an otherwise healthy looking plant from a proven line could just fail to do what our plants have always done unless the gardener fucked up in a major way.

that line of reason is, of course maddening to those of us who are in the throes of a fight to the death against an invisible plague. in the midst of staring down a whole grow of plants that started off with so much promise but that, six weeks into a 60 day bloom, just aren't doing their thing, i can totally relate to the panic and frustration and rage. the overall sense of helplessness is crippling and very much akin to what the farmers of the dustbowl must have felt in those chunky steinbeck novels we had to read in high school. you can see the steps of the kubler-ross cycle of grieving in it too. denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance...it's all there, writ large:

1. no way could this happen to an accomplished grower like myself. another week and the trichs will arrive.

2. that cocksucker who did this to me did it willfully, and he is going to die when i get my hands around his throat. (i know this one too well. and OHHHH the irony of it).

3. well maybe if i treat my veg stock with this chemical or that supplement, this will not happen again. i mean, they look healthy enough. and these odorless, frostless flowers—they should still make pretty good errl, right?

and so on.

does it seem to fit? anyone? idfk maybe i'm the crazy one.

then, there are those of us who have dealt with this scourge first hand and prevailed. if not in the sense of gaining an academic understanding, maybe we have gotten a practical one at least. after having lost a grow (and probably nearly your ass) to this thing, just coming out the other side and living to see your flowers do the amazing things they do once again is no small victory. i get both the smug self-satisfaction as well as the eagerness to preach the gospel of whatever it was we imagined we did to get ourselves rid of this curse. the fact remains though, that absent a real understanding of what causes dudding and some good peer review, whatever it was that we did probably amounts to little more than dumb luck and a good scrubbing.

anyhow, i did deal with a room full of full blown duds, about two years back. it was a painful and costly lesson. i do not claim to know with any certainty what the causative agent was, but i have heard some plausible explanations. without offering any further speculation on the topic, i will say that broad mite damage, systemic fungal blight, ad a latent and as of yet unidentified issue with the progeny of the sour dub are the ones that make most sense to me.

since that time, and after instituting a set of best practices that i follow like dogma, i have not experienced anything in my own garden that even closely resembles what i dealt with then. that said, i have read this thread, and i have also been contacted by exactly three individuals who have expressed concerns about the cuts they received at the cup. those concerns have all been addressed. the very first thing that was done was to summarily cull any stock that had even an infinitesimal chance of being suspect and to replace it with fresh gear directly from the breeder. anyone else who has a question or concern is welcome to contact OUTSIDE OF OPEN FORUM. your civility is appreciated but hardly compulsory. in any case, every reasonable effort will be made to sort out the situation to your full satisfaction. my word is bond. if, after exhausting that remedy, you are still pissed off, feel free to flame me openly. i am confident it will be a nonissue though.

it saddens and terrifies me to see dud related issues cropping up so very close to my own house again, especially so soon after switching gears and trying on a new role in this business. please believe that i take this thing very seriously and am committed to doing whatever i may to be of assistance to those dealing with this monster of a problem, regardless of where the plants in question came from or how they became affected. many of those issues are not appropriate ones for public threads though, and they certainly don't belong in this one, which deals with the general phenomenon—one that has been known (if not understood) for longer than the gg strain has existed.

with regard to dud identification, the very best criteria for early detection are deceptively simple and dependable. they cwere ennumerated for me by JW himself. i was dumbfounded when he laid them out and i realized just how spot on they are.

1. slow growth and general lack of vigor.

2. miniature sized new foliage.

3. abnormally tight internode spacing.

4. brittle stems that snap like tinder rather than bend like twine.

whoa. mind = blown. thanks joesy.

as for management strategies in general, the only surefire one i know of is to exercise good quarantine practices, and not to commit a full run's worth of time, labor, rent, materials, and utilities to anything you do not personally know to be viable.

in the unlikely event that problems arise even after these best practices have been deployed, protocol then would be to cull the stock in question, to do so before it is liable to contaminate anything else (in case the root agent is a communicable one) and to scrub like hell. that's what i did with the adub and the dubtech. it seems to have worked too. i realize what a hard call it is to make, but a plant that has not expressed the genetic traits that it ought to, well past the time when any other explanation will suffice, will almost certainly not bounce back by miracle.

while i still need to source a cut of positively dudded stock (as well as a safe place to play with such a dangerous toy) before i can say anything with any kind of certainty, my early tinkering with the old (suspect) line of glue, as well as what i've seen and heard from other growers suggests that reversing and selfing a strain and TC propagation are both lines of inquiry that show promise with regard to neutralizing the dud threat. this is only a mouthful of weak conjecture from my own unqualified mouth and nowhere else though. unfortunately, there is no suitable substitute for good independent inquiry and stringent peer review. things may be looking up, but there is still a long hard road to hoe. and until such time as prohibition ends and the academy is allowed to play and dialogue freely with Our Plant, we will remain very much dependent on each other to provide the best suggestions and solutions available. may we at least manage to be as civil and fair minded about it as we may.

sorry though i am i don't have the magic bullet for this thing, i do hope this clears up some of the confusion. if any of you are still inclined to sling shit or point fingers or otherwise dangle troll bait, please direct your rage and ire to my private inbox or, at the very least, to my personal thread. it is no understatement when i say this topic is paramount to all of us who make a living or a hobby of cultivating drug grade cannabis. to call it life-and-death would not be very much of a stretch. in any case, it is far too important to let it become sullied with personal drama and pettiness. with that in mind, i will try my damndest to hold my temper and have no part in that noise.

oops forgot the quote i was referring to

 

[RetroGrow]

What is the toxin, has it been identified? It is not alive?
"Damage is caused by secretion of a plant growth regulator or toxin as the mite feeds"
Sounds like even the enthomologists have no idea if it is a toxin or plant growth regulator that they pass into plants while feeding. Maybe if we knew it would help control or to eliminate the toxin/plant growth regulator? I did a quick search online and in my pest books, no help at all.
-SamS

It is a mystery just what these toxins are. Scientists believe it might come from their saliva, but even that is open for debate. I also haven't been able to find anything about this online. All I can say is that aspirin mitigates the effects of the toxins. However, it seems from High Life 45's posts that this is something different than the "dudding" caused by mites. I do believe it's a toxin, not a plant growth regulator. This is the consensus from all the reading I have done. By the way, mites are not insects, technically. They are arachnids.

 

[sunset limited]

sounds like an oxymoron.

you forgot to mention what method(s) did you employ to rid yourself of them?

cleared and nuked room in question. heated to 170°F for <24 hrs.

rest of premises: culled all observably affected stock as well as any examples of affected strains.

treated remaining stock with a host of miticides, rotated properly, including systemic (spiromefesin). also, neem & botanical oils & biowar foliar pack.

introduced biocontrols.

took two clones of each strain from apical growth rather than axial. destroyed rest of plant. submersed each clone in a miticide cocktail, once when cut and again after rooting.

scoped everything every day, paying special attention to apical meristem. it's no coincidence that the place where the lil bastards like to post up is the same one that's easiest for us to ignore.

disposed of all containers and all items we coulld afford t erpoace.
throughly and vigorously scrubbed and sanitized everything it was not practical to discard. autoclaved everything we could.

we now have foot baths and hand dips at every entrance. they all contain quaternary ammonia. we use them religiously.

we touch nothing with our bare hands. always gloves. we are downright anal about never letting a tool contact two plants without sanitizing. no shred of vegetation is left on the floor or otherwise off the plants to rot and attract fungus gnats and other things that feed on decay and carry plaguwe in their guts.

it was a pain int he ass to switch inot severe anal mode like that, but after a time it gets to be second nature.

So you did have mites, but didn't identify which ones? There's a difference between Broads, Cyclamens and Russetts. If you look at them through a microscope, you can see the difference. How did you "eradicate" them? My experience with broads is, even when you have cleaned/sterilized everything, and did everything you could to get rid of them, they have a remarkable ability to survive and come back. How can you be sure there weren't residual mites, or plants that were injected with the toxins before the mites were killed. Mite toxins will endure in plants for quite some time.
Anyway, if it's something different, something "new" having nothing to do with mite toxins, then it seems there should be a laboratory test to identify it.

i positively identified broads by their dimpled eggs. i also actually saw a broad on two occasions.

there was another type of egg present on the undersides of the leaves. i narrowed them to cyclamen or russets but couldn't make a positive ID from the egs alone with the very poor optics i was using back then.

x

i hear you about there usually needing to be a vector to transmit a viral pathogen.

1. i am practically convinced that there is a living pathogen at play here and not simply poison bug spit.

2. i have no rational basis to suspect a virus any more than
a fungus or bacterium.

3. i run recirc hydro, so, in practice, all my plants are in the same container. do you think this would suffice to spread a virus sans vector?

4. their numbers seemed negligible, but there were a few fungus gnats present while the spredaing was happening. i do not know if gnats are a vector of our hypothetical pathogen, but if ti were mine to describe, i would say that gnats definitely carry it.

with regard to reversing duds, i have remembered one thing. when i gave up on the adub, i threw the last couple of healthy looking examples of it outside. i wouldn't say that they flourished by any stabdard, but they did come in with trichs and a nose. the sample size is too small to be significant, but it is worth looking into further that dud plants may begin to bounce when placed under the sun and stars rather than under HID lamps.

 

[RetroGrow]

with regard to reversing duds, i have remembered one thing. when i gave up on the adub, i threw the last couple of healthy looking examples of it outside. i wouldn't say that they flourished by any standard, but they did come in with trichs and a nose. the sample size is too small to be significant, but it is worth looking into further that dud plants may begin to bounce when placed under the sun and stars rather than under HID lamps.

Good job with BM control. This business of improvement when placed outside is a puzzle. If it were a viral or bacterial infection, I don't see how placing it outside would cause improvement. Plants would theoretically still have the pathogen. If it were fungal, there might be a change when changing environment, ie., if it were more humid inside than outside. If it was from mite toxins, you might expect to see improvement with the passage of time.
Since you are diligent about keeping your room clean, and you are in hydro, I can see how it might be fungal in nature. Are you still having the same problem, or has it passed? Have you tried aspirin in your rez?
And no one has had an effected plant analyzed?

 

[Sam_Skunkman]

Below is a picture that will give you a visual reference point to the size of Broad Mites. These Broad Mites are sitting atop a White Fly.
-SamS