Five common pathogen symptoms, and what they mean for your plants

After spending time and money on your grow room, it's not a good feeling to walk into your greenhouse and spot wilting plants or leaves twisting and curling or brittle stems. 

Even worse, there may be no visible symptoms at all until the end of the growth cycle. When you should be getting bud, you get duds instead.

Worried you might have  plant pathogens in your grow room? Here are five common cannabis pathogen symptoms and what they might mean.

1. My cannabis  plants are stunted
Stunting can sneak up on you. At first, plants might just seem stuck in an early growth stage. They just don't progress. Another sign of stunting is if the stem points where leaves or branches begin are too closely spaced.

Disease, pests or poor growth conditions may be to blame for cannabis plant stunting. Set up the conditions for success by understanding cannabis cultivation practices.

Pathogens in the grow room could cause stunting. Stunting is an early-stage sign of several pathogens, so it can be hard to narrow it down based on this symptom alone. Common pathogenic culprits of stunting include:

• Beet curly top virus (BCTV). If your cannabis plant has BCTV, it may show stunting. Other tell-tale symptoms of BCTV include leaf deformation, especially with a curly top appearance.
• Hop latent viroid (HLVd). HLVd (sometimes called HpLVd) can cause stunting during the vegetative stage of cannabis growth. During this stage, the cannabis plant should be growing rapidly and developing stems, branches, and leaves, but HLVd can cause stunting. HLVd may be difficult to spot at this stage, however. The most notorious symptom of HLVd is dudding (more on that coming up).
• Lettuce chlorosis virus (LCV). LCV can also cause stunting, though this is not the most obvious symptom of LCV. Other symptoms of LCV in cannabis include interveinal chlorosis and leaf distortion.

If your plants aren't growing like they should, it might be growth conditions, but if it's a pathogen, you don't want to let it spread unchecked in your grow room. If you don't have a plant pathogen testing regimen, try isolating or destroying the impacted specimen. Then make sure your grow conditions are dialed in to promote plant health.

2. My cannabis plant leaves are turning yellow
Yellowing, or chlorosis, can impact the entire leaf or only specific areas. Yellowing may start at the leaf margins and progress inward. Or the leaves may turn yellow while the veins stay green; this is called interveinal chlorosis.

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