Grant: Alliance Grants

Cannabis has become a multi-billion dollar industry and now represents one of Canada's most economically important agricultural commodities. As the industry has developed, production challenges have emerged that impact yield, quality, and economic feasibility. In particular, viral pathogens such as hop latent viroid have become a widespread problem for producers, resulting in reduced product quality and billions of dollars in lost revenue. Hop latent viroid is particularly challenging to control as is can be present without showing any symptoms, there are no viable options to treat infected plants, and it readily spreads through vegetative propagation and into seed. Together, these factors make it difficult to eliminate from a facility once it is established and prevention is the best solution. Viral infections are not unique to cannabis and are a common problem in other clonally propagated species. Since treating viral infections in plants is generally not possible or practical, in other species growers rely on clean plant programs to ensure all propagules are certified virus free and implement cultural practices to minimize spread. These programs rely on plant tissue culture techniques, particularly meristem culture, to eliminate viruses and propagate clean plant material. Currently, no published methods for meristem base viral elimination exist for Cannabis and research is needed to develop and validate such technologies. The focus of this project will be to develop technologies to establish a clean plant program for cannabis. This will include developing and validating diagnostic techniques, meristem culture methods to elimiate viruses from infected plants, micropropagation systems to multiply clean plants, and cultural practices to minimize viral spread within facilities. Together, these results will form the basis for a clean plant program in cannabis and potentially prevent billions of dollars in lost productivity.