Fusarium, my experience...

[hampy]

I post this as a resume of my long fight with fusarium, partially to warn other growers of this devastating disease, and partially as a last resort hoping for some input that might help save me from this torture.

It all started 8 years ago, when I germed some 60 seeds to start up my grows again after a break for rebuilding the growrooms and parts of the house.

I like to plant a lot of seeds of each strain searching for the best possible mothers, but this time I wanted variety straight away so I germed 6 strains of 10 seeds each. If memory serves me, they were Boglifesaver, Medicine Man, C99, A11, Sweet tooth#3, and a local Jack Hereer variety that's just fucking awesome.

I have a system of running organic aerated nutes drain to waste in perlite-enhanced peat, but this time I decided to try out coco.

The coco-coir I bought from the growshop was some generic dutch brand as they were out of their regular Canna. And I remember SO well that I took the last two remaining bags on the pallet with a slight doubt to it... Perhaps I should just use my regular peat-brand instead...?

Well, if I'd done that, this story would never have been written.

The seeds germed and started out ok, but on their second set of nodes and with a diameter of some 3 inches they just stopped in their tracks, got purple stems, and denied to straighten up no matter what I did of flushes and foliar feedings.

The taproot/roots developed extremely poorly; thin, sort of reluctant, and with a scrawny and unhealthy looking mycorrizae. As opposed to the extremely fast, thick, vigorous roots I was used to see, that just took the pot in posession before the plants exploded in growth.

After two weeks stagnant I gave them an universal organic fungicide/pesticide in pure desperation, and then the sickly seedlings just took off. But during the entire veg-phase I had a feeling that something was up - they just never seemed so fast and vibrant as I remembered...

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, but the grave nature of it still escaped me.

After the sexing and runt-weeding was done I was left with 27 potential mothers to flower, and initially it seemed ok. They stretched and settled for budding more or less as normal, but started to lose fan-leaves already in week 3. And that's just weird, cause my plants always stays a lush green until harvest - usually without dropping a single leaf...

And then the buds stopped growing by week 5, and the few flowers that were developed by then started to swell and mature. I got perhaps a yield of 40-50% of expected from that grow, of poor quality, airy buds. And the clones never started to grow properly.

After the harvest some pots were left in the basement for a couple of days, and when I was about to throw them out they had a thin and airy layer of white mold all over the surface. And as the buds hanged to dry, I also found this thin coat of mold starting to develop on the buds themselves.

So I figured I'd had an attack by some fungus, wrote it up as bad luck, got rid of all infected organic material, sterilized the rooms and equipment, and started over a month or two later.

Only to have seeds rotting in their shells, taproots coming UP, out of the soil, and purple, stagnant and dying seedlings all over the place...

And this was 8 years ago this spring.

 

[hampy]

And then, after a lot of work sterilizing the rooms and equipment over and over, a lot of research, a lot of wasted money on dying seeds, and shared experiences with a couple of unfortunate Overgrowers, I had pinpointed the culprit as Fusarium wilt, probably Oxysporum.

The most characteristic traits of it is the ability to burst out from the fruits as airborne mold/spores when the plant is harvested, and it's uncanny persistence once it takes hold in an environment.

I spent 3 fucking years of my life totally obsessed with beating it. I used heavy-duty ozone-generators for months, I fumigated the entire house with formaline as the pro's do for killing spores in nurseries, and everything I owned was washed and sterilized over and over.

And I invested tens of thousands of dollars in a further improvement of the growrooms, redid the drainage around the house, and fucking painted it inside and out hoping to finally beat this curse.

Well, I lost.

I never got to see a healthy plant in that house again, and nor did any of my fellow Overgrowers at their respective locations.

So. I moved. An exhausting process, where lots of clothes, books and other stuff were discarded, as well as most of the equipment. And every fucking thing we owned was washed and sterilized out of the first house, and then washed and sterilized into the other...

We moved early spring to minimize the risk of airborne spores from possibly infected outside plants to be a problem, but I guess I was to eager and started out too soon in the new place. Cause as soon as I got well-settled and sprouted some seeds, it was back.

And to be honest, after all that work and effort and wasted money, it nearly fucking killed me at the time...

I burned all the organic material including the soil from the sprouting-pots and gave it a two year break before I tried again.

Same result, sick seedlings with poor roots.

By now, I've given it ANOTHER 3 years, and just got some clones from a friend, really thinking that NOW, finally...

But it weren't to be. They took the better part of 3 weeks to root, and sprouted the same scrawny looking slow and unhealthy roots I've seen a million times before.

So, I just have to come to terms with the fact that my career as a grower is over. After an heroic effort that took the better part of a decade, a lost home, and a very painful and noticeable amount of money, the fusarium won.

And I lost.

Bigtime.

 

[hampy]

The litterature describes pathogenic fusarium as perhaps the worst fungal-disease there is, with capabilities for spreading and devastation that leaves most others as minor nuisances in comparison.

Popular cultivars of everything from bananas to ornamentals have actually been wiped out of existence from it, and formerly productive districts of everything from wheat to cotton and tomatoes are lying waste for these crops today.

And plant-pathology researchers have been baffled by it's capabilities to spread, as comparative studies between healthy and innoculated crops has been disrupted cause the pathogen emigrated to the healthy control-plants too. Despite the regular procedures to avoid cross-contamination.

My conclusion, is that this disease are an urgent and very real threat to the whole community, due to it's spreading-capacity and unreal persistence.

And that once you've got it in an environment, it most likely uses outdoor plants and herbs as hosts, and thus keeps reinfecting the area with a fresh supply of airborne spores each season.

And based on my experience... If you get it, just consider your growing days as something of the past, cut your losses, and don't throw time and money after it.

I did for 8 years, and it did me no good.

 

[Medium Pimpin']

The coco-coir I bought from the growshop was some generic dutch brand as they were out of their regular Canna. And I remember SO well that I took the last two remaining bags on the pallet with a slight doubt to it... Perhaps I should just use my regular peat-brand instead...?

Well, if I'd done that, this story would never have been written.

so are you saying you got this disease from using coco?

 

[hampy]

Yes, I did. Can't remember the brand, it was just a generic dutch manufacturer. But fusarium has three kinds of spores, two airborne with a max survival time of 5 years in good conditions, and one soilborne that can hibernate for decades waiting for a suitable root to pass it by.

So I guess the first outbreak only got going after some time cause the soilborne pathogen took some time to activate. And that subsequent grows were immidiately infected due to a large supply of the airborne spores. The two types of airborne spores are one large one that spreads from visible mold on dead plant-matter, and the other is a smaller one that migrates through the plants, and can spread invisibly from the surface of live plants to my understanding.

So yes, I germed the seeds early spring in an arctic/temperate environment after a long break for redoing the growrooms, which was freshly painted, and I used sterilized equipment.

So the coco was the only possible source of infection.

 

[gingerale]

Im calling bullshit on this until we see actual pics of mold or proof of an infection. It sounds more like your plants are suffering from nutrient deficiencies or something like that, not mold.

 

[hampy]

Im calling bullshit on this until we see actual pics of mold or proof of an infection. It sounds more like your plants are suffering from nutrient deficiencies or something like that, not mold.

Yeah, it's nutrient deficiency allright, due to clogging of the xylem and a massive effort by the plants to keep sprouting new roots to replace the rotting and dying ones...

Dude, I had VERY succesful grows for 3-4 years before this struck, and had developed a system of aerated organic fertilizers ran drain to waste in 3,5 gallon pots with 30% perlite in the media.

My plants were litterary supercharged, and always stayed a lush green until harvest. And a 2 weeks vegged clone topped for 8-10 colas of equal height, typically yielded 120-150 grams of premium bud under a 600 hps. 4 clones under each lamp.

And my clones rooted as fast as you've ever seen, 3 days from potting to visible sprouting is my record in that department, and I had a very close to 100% success rate with them.

Growing weed is easy once you get the basics down.

But I haven't seen a healthy plant for 8 years due to this shit. Call bullshit all you want, but I am NOT an idiot...

This problem is severe, devastating, virtually unbeatable, and it is spreading.

 

[hampy]

http://z10.invisionfree.com/CANNABIS_CULTURE/index.php?showtopic=27

Fusarium from what I can make out it has been devastating both commercial growrooms and the home grower in Holland for several years now and they have been loosing the battle.

What is fusarium? This is nicked from an agriculture research site.
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Taxonomy: Vascular wilt fungus; Ascomycete although sexual stage is yet to be found. The most closely related teleomorphic group, Gibberella, is classified within the Pyrenomycetes.

Host range: Very broad at the species level. More than 120 different formae speciales have been identified based on specificity to host species belonging to a wide range of plant families.

Disease symptoms: Initial symptoms of vascular wilt include vein clearing and leaf epinasty, followed by stunting, yellowing of the lower leafs, progressive wilting of leaves and stem, defoliation and finally death of the plant. In cross-sections of the stem, a brown ring is sometimes evident in the area of the vascular bundles. Some formae speciales are not primarily vascular pathogens but cause foot and rootrot or bulbrot.

Economic importance: Causes severe losses on most vegetables and flowers, several field crops such as cotton and tobacco, plantation crops such as banana, plantain, coffee and sugarcane, and a few shade trees.

Disease control: Use of resistant varieties is the only practical measure for controlling the disease in the field.

Under greenhouse conditions, soil sterilization can be performed. Alternative control methods with potential for the future include soil solarization and biological control with antagonistic bacteria or fungi.
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General back ground info, in the resent past both the USA and Russia have been putting millions a year to develop new strains of fusarium oxysporum as biological weapons to spray on enemies crops. The USA are still working on it and have also been trying to develop a form of fusarium specific to cannabis, the idea being to eradicate the entire genus from the planet or at least parts of it.

Things that can reduce the risk of infecting your plants. It is obvious that a large proportion of imported bud from Europe is from infected plants. Just touching bud and then touching a plant can infect the plant, smoking a joint of infected bud anywhere near cannabis plants can infect them. It can be carried in infected clones.

It is also now here in grow rooms in the uk, it is going to spread. You have been warned.

 

[microbox]

how many different types of soils or soilless ways have you tried since then?

 

[hampy]

I've tried coco, pure perlite, soil (peat), DWC, and NFT-gutters. Both liquid organics and chem-ferts. And I've tried to innoculate them with everything from mycostop, to trichoderma and Advanced's Tarantula.

Nothing stops it, but the DWC and NFT with the chems seemed to stave it off a bit. Piss poor results anyway though. And no possibility of keeping a grow going over time. You can keep mums for awhile as it does not affect the plants too much in veg - much like other pathogens. It is in it's best interest to let the plants manage to drop some seeds and reach the largest possible biomass. Both for having a large mass of decaying plant-matter to spread from, and to ensure hosts for it's own next generation.

So mums can be kept and clones taken for some time, but the clones deteriorate rapidly, gets increasingly harder to root, and in awhile won't grow at all probably as the mums gets tired and the general disease-pressure increases in the rooms over time.

Indica's are btw more resistant to it than hybrids - as a general observation. The A11 and C99 seedplants from the first grow just plain sucked for it - even in veg - and their clones rotted. While the Boglifesaver and Med-man seemed just fine before week 3-4 of flower, and their clones mostly rooted.

The litterature states that the only viable method of beating it once it takes hold in an environment, is to use resistant cultivars.

Perhaps it is time for the breeders to try to breed some soon...

 

[big_nims]

Hey bro, had it bad too. Used Ridomil (5 drops per gallon), Mycostop and Rootsheild in veg, and Mycostop and Rootsheild in Flower. Have not lost a single plant since.