Episode 164: Mycotoxins & Microclimates: The Science of Cannabis Pathology with Dr. Nicole Gauthier

Welcome to the Cannabis Cultivation and Science Podcast. I'm your host, Tad Hussey of KISS Organics. This is the podcast where we discuss the cutting edge of growing from a science-based perspective and draw on top experts from around the industry to share their wisdom wisdom and knowledge. As I mentioned before, we are heading to Bozeman, Montana, the last weekend in August for our Cannabis Cultivation and Science Conference at Collective Elevation. Early bird tickets are moving fast and workshop spots for the first day are very limited. So if you haven't grabbed yours yet, head over to kisorganics.com to secure your spot. I'm particularly excited because today's guest, Dr. Nicole Gautier, will be one of our speakers at the event. So you'll be able to see her present and ask her questions in person this August. As I already mentioned, my guest this week is Dr. Nicole Gauthier. She is a pathologist and professor and extension specialist at the University of Kentucky. Her program focuses on disease management of specialty crops, including hemp. In her extension role, she develops educational and outreach programs to help growers manage disease through identification, understanding of pathosystems, and integration of management strategies. Her research focuses on a range of hemp diseases, including Fusarium head blight. Dr. Gauthier earned her Bachelor of Science in Horticultural Science and her PhD in Plant Pathology from Louisiana State University. She joined the UK College of Agriculture in 2011 and began working with industrial hemp in 2014. There will be a link on the podcast page to access her resources and research. Now onto the show.

Hi, Dr. Gauthier. Thanks for coming back on the show today.

Hello, how are you?

I'm great. I'm so excited to talk about pathology some more. I just had Dr. Zamir Punja on the podcast. You've been on the podcast before, and there were a lot of follow-up questions that I would love to dive into with you regarding his interview.

Never a dull moment in the plant disease world.

Yeah, so I, I published a portion of that interview talking about mycotoxins. So maybe let's just start there. What, what is a mycotoxin, and what are the risks associated with mycotoxins?

So mycotoxin— myco means fungi— so mycotoxins are toxins produced by fungi. Generally, I'm gonna say generally, because the most common mycotoxins that we talk about are produced by Fusarium species. So Fusaria is plural for Fusarium species. Um, so a lot of the mycotoxins that we know and talk about, at least in the cannabis or hemp world, are caused by Fusaria. So all, there's not just one, there are lots of them that with varying degrees of toxicity and symptoms, and then also Each species will produce different toxins.

And this may be outside your area of expertise, but how do these toxins work on the human body? For example, you mentioned Fusarium mycotoxins. What are the risks associated with that?

So one in particular, so Fusarium graminiarum. So any of you who want a nerdy fact for the day, Fusarium graminiarum is the most common head rot, bud rot that we see in flowers outdoors, and it produces is a mycotoxin that we call DON, D-O-N, deoxynivalenol, but you can abbreviate it DON. And DON is a vomitoxin, so it creates, induces vomiting in patients. So DON in wheat and grain crops, in animal feeds, highly regulated in animal feed and human feed, and wheat, for example, or cereals. So it causes a lot of weight loss and food rejection in animals. Lots of vomiting. So that's an example of a Fusarium mycotoxin.

Is it similar to—

Dawn is the most common one. It's the one we know so well and we've studied so much. In fact, I have a lot of, um, Dawn and, um, Fusarium graminearum research in my program.

Is it similar to like food poisoning then in terms of how the body reacts to it? And does it have any long-term impacts?

There are some that do have long-term impacts that, that are associated with long-term risks. And again, it just really depends on which Fusarium species we're talking about will determine which of the mycotoxins it produces. So in the cannabis world, Fusaria are the ones that we kind of think about. We make that assumption, okay, there's Fusarium there, we need to think about mycotoxins.

And just to recap, Fusarium can end up in buds similar to Botrytis. and I learned some new stuff from you today about that. Can you talk a little bit about what that may display as in comparison to Botrytis?

Okay, so all of our fungi, they're, they're all driven, or plant pathogens really, are driven by the amount of humidity. So temperature and humidity, those environmental conditions. So Fusaria can be really fuzzy if they're in a high humidity area, over 80%, they get really, really fuzzy and they look, they're identical to Botrytis sometimes. But if the humidity is a little bit lower, then there wouldn't be as much fungal growth on the outside. It would be more inside and those, those peduncles and those stems kind of would be in that stem. And then, of course, you have the result of the necrosis because that's what the pathogen is doing, right? It is infecting and it's causing necrosis. And necrosis is just dead tissue. Right, it's killing the tissue. So that's what— so it depends how much humidity is there is what you will see. But you can see a lot of fuzzy growth, especially in indoor grows, because a lot of times when that humidity is not managed, that you'll see a lot more of it.

And we should, we should also be removing then any dead or necrotic tissue, leaf tissue, from the room, I would assume, to just provide less of an environment for Fusarium or Botrytis.

Okay, so we're, we're getting, we're getting into—

I know, I know, I— because I want to go back, I have more questions, but let's continue me down this path a little bit. Yeah.

So, Botrytis is going to infect already dead tissue. That's its favorite thing. Okay, so it's a saprophyte. It's going to go into something that's already dead. That's why we always tell you to clip off any dead tissue. The more dead tissue there is, the more Botrytis can infect and colonize and then sporulate. And all of those hundreds of thousands of spores are in a grow room, millions of spores. That's, that's what's happening. Fusarium species are different. So Fusarium will infect healthy plant tissue and it will kill that plant tissue. Now, of course, it's not that black and white, right? Fusarium can have a saprophytic stage, so it can live on dead things if it needs to, and Botrytis can actually infect if it needs to, right? So I'm generalizing, but overall Botrytis likes things that are already dead and Fusarium can infec— infects things that are alive and kills it. So those are the two opposite, but in enough, in a stressful enough high humidity situation, both can do the same thing and they can look the same if you're just looking at fuzzy growth, right? If you have a hand lens or if you have even a little portable microscope, you can see the spores very, very different. But that fuzzy growth, if you're just looking for fuzzy growth, they can look the same.

That's really interesting.

I think maybe a course on how to identify the spores, if that is something we could do as growers, would be really useful.

That would be really fun.

Maybe we could do that at the conference this year.

Oh, that would be really fun. Yes, let's do it.

Okay, well, again, I'm getting off topic.

So I know we learned from Dr.

Punja that the infection window for botrytis, at least, is earlier in the plant cycle, flowering cycle, than we realized. He, they did some research and found that week 3, week 4 was actually the worst window for when these infections were occurring in terms of how it would display later on in flower. Which I thought was interesting. Do we have any research around Fusarium for that? And then to follow that up, humidity, you're saying high humidity. Can you give us some sort of number to kind of quantify that?

Or— Okay, you've asked me two questions. I'm sorry. So I'm gonna answer one and then you're gonna have to get me back on track. So first of all, uh, no, let's, let's answer your second one, 'cause I'm remembering that one. Uh, Botrytis likes, um, 85% and higher relative humidity. Okay, so remember 100% humidity is water, right? We can get to, I'm in the, I'm in the South, South, uh, we can get to 100% relative humidity though on a summer day. So that's when you feel like you can cut the humidity with a knife. Well, think about walking into a greenhouse or into an indoor grow. You can feel it when you walk in. So that humidity's got to go. So Botrytis and your oomycetes like downy mildew, you're looking at 85% relative humidity and up. Most of your other fungi, it's 70%, okay, they need at least 70% relative humidity, okay, that's totally common in a greenhouse. So we need to bring it down, we need to aim for 65%, for example. So 70% is kind of that magic number, except for a few odd pathogens. So 70% is magic. Powdery mildews, some of those species can be lower. Okay, so then, Your question was, when will these pathogens infect? And again, we're kind of toggling between Fusarium and Botrytis here. So most of your pathogens like tender tissue. As, as plant tissue— let's talk about leaves, for example— as that cuticle thickens, as a plant matures, it's harder for that little microscopic spore to infect. So just think about it like that, right? So the more the mature tissue is less likely to become infected. Unless you have a very high spore load. We call that inoculum load. But Fusarium head blight or Fusarium bud blight does something a little bit different because it prefers plants in the reproductive stages to infect. And as you get those heavy, thick, as my, my graduate student calls them, chunky buds, so as you've got that microclimate in there, so regardless of what the climate is in the field or in the greenhouse or in building that microclimate inside that bud. It's so— it's the bud architecture that's creating a microclimate that is conducive for infection.

So the humidity inside the bud structure is going to be higher than the humidity in the room. And so we have to kind of account for that.

Absolutely. Inside of a canopy of any plant, closer to the soil or the media where we are watering, all those are all microclimates, right? We've got microclimates on the floor different from at the ceiling and the sidewalls. If you're outside, you know, the east side is going to dry out faster as the sun rises. All of those things, all of those, those are all microclimates. We have to think about them in general. We can't just, you know, look at the weather station and say, "Low humidity today, it's all good." It's not that easy. So in general, your younger tissue is going to be more tender and more easily infected, but then when you've got microclimates, uh, sometimes, and a heavy spore load, When you have that heavy inoculum load, it can overpower anything, right? It just takes a few to initiate those infections. So, your risk keeps going up every time you add one of those variables, like susceptibility of a host or environmental conditions or anything you add or more of those fungal spores, you keep increasing that risk. And so, you have a higher chance, higher likelihood that infection occurs.

Yeah. In my current grow, I had a power outage around week 3 or week 4 where humidity spiked at night, temperature dropped. And so I am going to be extra susceptible, I assume, this round for a lot of, you know, Fusarium and Botrytis specifically. Unfortunately, it's just the reality of what happened. But yeah, I think that's, I think that's a really good point.

Well, you know, too, Botrytis likes cooler weather. So here in Kentucky, Botrytis, we'll see Botrytis more in the spring, especially especially, you know, for an indoor. So when it cools off at night and then it warms up during the day, you'll start getting— so as you have that differential outside, you'll start having that condensation on the inside. So you'll see that too. So think about weather really makes a difference, but Botrytis really likes cool weather, and it likes that drippy greenhouse environments as well.

Yeah, and one of the things that I remember from our last conversation again, you just had me think of this when you're talking about humidity, is that I believe at the time you said there were two species of powdery mildew that are known to infect cannabis, and one infects at a high humidity, but the other was able to reproduce quite successfully, I think, in the, in the 40s. Is that correct?

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, so go ahead. Sorry.

Oh no. So I guess all I was going to say is that that made me think that's where VPD comes in. It's really important that the plant is able to optimally transpire. Fire and regulate its water control from a health perspective to help prevent pathogens versus just saying, let's go super low humidity.

Yeah, right. So you've, you've also got to take care of your plant, right? You can't bring the humidity down so low that no fungi or bacteria will infect, right? We haven't even talked about bacteria, right? We're talking about fungi. Most of our diseases are caused by fungi, not all, most. But your powdery mildews, and you've got to know which powdery mildew you have. I can guess 90% of the time, but we're not always sure. And so which of those powdery mildews you have, and then also remember outdoor grow is very different than an indoor grow. Those are vastly different situations. So keeping everything clean, fallowing in between, in between crops, and washing everything down. We were talking earlier about zoning. Or blocking. So when you don't have that airflow going all the way across all the plants in your production system, that you kind of got some breaks so that if you do have an outbreak, you don't just have those spores blowing around. So we use the words molds and mildews a lot. Those are generally when we see the fungus, we see that fungal structure, and if they're powdery looking, powdery mildew is number one, right? What you're seeing are so many spores, it looks like powder. That if there are a lot of spores being produced, they're blowing around. Whereas if you have something like hemp leaf spot or Bipolaris gigantea, it's got big sticky spores that don't blow around. We're, we're carrying them around on our clothing, but your powdery mildews or anything that produces a lot of light spores blow around. So zoning or blocking to keep that movement. But yeah, so thinking about, is there some resistance anywhere in any of the cultivars, right? Fallowing in between, washing everything, sanitizing the entire greenhouse. Like, if you're not certified organic, a quaternary ammonium. There's some hydrogen peroxide type products that you can wash down with, but the more you wash, the more you're getting rid of any residuals that are on benches, on the floors, on the walls, tools and equipment. So just washing everything down. So, and starting again, starting from scratch. And then the question is, are you using, are you starting from seed, or are you bringing in plants that may have already been infected in another facility and you're just bringing it in before symptoms develop?

Yeah, I would add filtering your in— your intake air too is another good option. And then when you talk about partitioning, we also discussed just not having a massively large grow room, having smaller rooms that allow you to, if you do get an outbreak, you can control it to that space. So that's one reason not to have a just a huge grow space that's all one room.

That's right. That's right. And blocking or zoning by cultivar, by planting date. So again, if you have an outbreak of anything, right, whether it's a virus or if it's powdery mildew or anything, right, a root disease that you've, you can, even if you have to rogue and you have to, to, you know, failed, failed, uh, grow, you can only, you only have to eliminate a certain part. Or if you have to quarantine, if you get a new shipment in, you absolutely want to quarantine. Zoning really helps you do all of those things.

I want to jump around a little bit today because we have a lot of different topics we're going to talk about. One of them, though, that I wanted to touch on was this idea of genera or classification, because you've said some things to me right before the podcast about how we're kind of oversimplifying or clumping terminology about, you know, Fusarium, Pythium, powdery mildew. Can you kind of touch on that a little bit?

Okay. So tigers and house cats are the same genera. They're felines. They're not the same thing. One is scary, one is scarier. So think about, think about all of your fungi or all your plant pathogens very much the same way. There are Fusaria that are pathogenic, some are highly pathogenic, some are opportunistic, meaning that plant has to be stressed and or some situation has to occur in order for infection to happen. And there are lots that are benign and there are a whole lot that are beneficial. So you're going to find Fusaria everywhere. You're going to find, we were talking about earlier, Pseudomonads, right? You've got all of your beneficial Pseudomonads in the soil. We have biological control agents that are Pseudomonads. And then there is, there is Pseudomonas that is a plant pathogen. So you can think about that with almost every fungal group or bacterial group. So really knowing the species is so important. So knowing what you have and not just saying, "It's some Fusarium," because I can take any plant anywhere and I can find a Fusarium species, I promise you. But if I don't know what that species is, is that what's causing the problem or is it a benign Fusarium species or is it something beneficial, right? We don't know that. So think about that across the board, Streptomyces, we can go on and on. So it's really important to know, but guess what? Sometimes it's hard to know. So don't get caught up in, oh, I've got Pythium, or I've got, you know, we keep talking about Fusarium. Don't get caught up in, in those kinds of things, right? So calm down, back up, and then spend the money for it, for a realistic, for an effective test by a diagnostician.

And this applies to oomycetes as well, correct? Because I mentioned to you, there are people out there doing direct microscopy. And then claiming, oh, they're seeing Oomycetes in your soil and therefore that soil is contaminated and that's causing your disease problems. But what you were saying is, well, I'll just let you say it. What are your thoughts around that?

There are lots and lots of Pythium species in the soil. Always. We can find them everywhere. And again, like I just said, most of our fungal genera we have, you know, we can have beneficials, we can have just lots of them. So you've got to know and you, you're going to gauge that by the Pythium, for example, plant roots. Do you have infection in those plant roots? Because again, you will find Pythium in the soil at every turn. So you've got to, you've got to really be able to identify plant disease, right? Not a microbe in the soil, not a microbe on a leaf surface, not a microbe in your, in your owner, in your plant. You've got to be able to identify plant disease an infection, and then identify that all the way to species level.

So not all oomycetes are pathogenic?

No, no, absolutely not.

And you can't tell just with direct microscopy if that's a pathogenic species or not?

No, I mean, that, that was old pathology, right? Now we're using molecular means to get down to it. Now, if you have infection, right, if you've got brown or gray mushy roots, and I put it under my microscope and I see oo spores, or if I see zoospores, floating around, that's a very different scenario than I just had soil. And that's why we don't test soil, because we're gonna find all kinds of things and it's very misleading. And unless you really understand what's going on, it's scary. It's scary when you get a list of all of the, the genera that have been identified and they all look just like this list of pathogens that, you know, I've published on my website. So unless you have plant disease, my recommendation is don't go there. It's, it's meaningless.

Yeah, I mentioned to you before the— before we started the podcast that I had a grower reach out just last week that said he was talking with, uh, a consultant, I believe this, uh, Dr. So-and-so, and they had tested this grower's soil outdoor, indoor, and found Fusarium in all of it. And he reached out to me, and I was a little confused because I had never heard of people just testing soil for Fusarium like that. And, um, I know that the testing methods, the PCR testing that I've seen, is, is going come back with a positive in soil, like you mentioned, pretty much 100% of the time because it's ubiquitous in soils. So I was thinking, you know, put a plant in it and if you see a problem with the plant, now you know you have Fusarium, but that's a big risk for a grower. Is there any way to sort of mitigate that or any other way to really test or know if it's a problem or not?

It's probably not worth the money if we want to do that, right? Because you've got to, so you would have to, design primers. So for those who don't know, a primer is what will bind to certain sections of DNA, only the sections that we have deemed an identifiable code, if you will. So, right, so we use, we can use certain primers to give us a yes/no. So that's, we call that PCR. So we use a PCR yes/no, species-specific, okay? So I might be able to design primers to say, do I have Fusarium graminearum? or do I have Fusarium oxysporum? Okay, that's the vascular wilt one. I can design primers to give a yes/no on that. That doesn't tell me about all the others. That tells me just the one I designed for. So then how many different sets of primers, how many things are you going to test for? That money adds up. Second thing you can do is to sequence. Okay, so that, that means you sequence everything, whatever's there, right? Just kind of shotgun whatever you've got there. And when we do that, we use general primers that are only telling us genera, or we can design primers and sequence for each individual species. It's just so expensive, right? So, so the answer in general is no. So the question I would ask your grower is, why did they have that test? Like, what made them have that test? What, what did their plants look like last year in that soil? If they're indoor, they're changing their media, I assume, or if they're hydroponic or something with a recirculating water system, what's going on there? But if they have an outdoor grow, what did the crop look like last year at harvest? That's the question. If there is disease, we manage it preventatively. And that goes on to a different topic. But if there was no disease, we just follow good ag practices, right? Good cultural practices. But if there was a, if there is a history of disease, then we ramp up what we do and how we approach it.

That's a good point.

But you're always going to find, to find something scary if you do that, that, um, a panel and you just identify genera. It's always going to be scary and it will tell you nothing.

Yeah, so just to state this another way is we, we don't need to be testing our soils for pathogens. We really need to wait till we have a symptomatic plant to really know that we have a problem and then we can deal with it accordingly. I think that's great because I think there is, that is scary to be told you have Fusarium in your soil. Um, and, and I think that leads me to another sort of question or sort of perspective that I have that I would love to hear your thoughts on. I've always thought of pathogens in terms of like spore pressure. Like, with the exception of some of these things like copper latent viroid, which I either have or don't have in my grow space, a lot of these things like powdery mildew, Fusarium, I just assume it's there, but my spore pressure is probably low enough, or my plant is healthy enough, and I have the right environmental conditions to sort of fight it off, or it's not going to become an issue. So I don't know, first of all, what do you think? That's a good way of looking at a grow space, or do you have a different sort of perspective on it that you think is a better way to think of this?

So if it's an indoor grow space, think of a hospital, right? It's clean, right? If you have an outdoor grow space, it's the opposite, right? You've got that microbial diversity. That's a different kind of clean, right? It's a dirty clean. So there are two very different things. If you're in a sanitary a sanitary indoor space, then you're so sterile, you have none of those antagonists, you have none of those beneficials. So the first thing that comes in, whether it comes in introduced into plants, or if it was residual, you know, you didn't sanitize between crops in a fallow period, or, you know, bad venting, whatever it is, something comes in, it can take hold because there are no antagonists, there are no enemies. And so that's a different, that's a different situation than when you're outdoors. And everything is coming at every plant. But you've got those antagonists, you've got that microbiome, and you've got that, that balance, right? So those are two different things. And I think your listeners need to really think about what information they're absorbing and how it applies to their particular situation. It's about environment less so than are you growing hemp or are you growing marijuana? No, it's all Cannabis sativa. And, but, but it's that environment. It's that growing, that production system that really matters. So your question, sorry. No, it makes sense.

It's so, so it's nuanced. I like the hospital analogy. The reason I'm thinking about though is because a lot of the growers I work with, we've talked about this, uh, we do what people call living soil nowadays where we're reusing the media. And there may be some natural antagonistic microorganisms in the soil that help prevent, you know, the Pythium or the of botrytis and things like that, but we aren't able to get sterile because that's our main nutrient cycler is this, you know, these microbes in the soil. So it brings up different IPM and pathology challenges, but also may offer a little bit of protection. So it's just a little different than the hospital analogy, but I like the idea. All the growers I work with, we tell them like, you want to be as clean as possible for every other aspect of that room.

So think about when we're kids, right? When we share our ice cream with the dog and we're rolling around in the dirt We're so darn healthy. We've got that immunity. And that's different again than the hospital analogy when there's a staph outbreak or if there's some outbreak in a sterile environment. But you asked about inoculum load, you asked about spore load, and there's always going to be— if there would always be certain spores outside, who knows, right? Indoors, you should not have Fusarium spores flying around. You'll probably have a lot of powdery mildew and Botrytis. Those are pretty much ubiquitous. And then of course, you're monoculturing. That's a whole nother day. That's a whole nother topic. You're monoculturing. So when something starts, when something gets a foothold, it's got an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Yeah. So it's more likely to spread.

We're not diversifying.

And I see people that throw in cover crops or a few other plant species and now think that they're diversified. But I've pushed back pretty hard on that saying, you know, we're doing controlled environment agriculture. Even if you add 20 different plant species there that are now other crops that you have to manage and take care of. It's, it's still not the diversity that you would see outdoors, unfortunately.

Right. That's exactly right. And you've got a different kind of plant too, right? You've got a plant that's been bred to be a certain height and to produce a certain size flower or to whatever it is we're breeding for. And when we're breeding, we lose some traits in order to gain others. And so anytime you're looking at any kind of agricultural crop, right? Whether it's that biggest, reddest apple or that seedless watermelon or that high THC cannabis, we're, we're breeding for something and we're doing that at the sake of other things. So, um, this is modern agriculture and we have to realize that and say we're not going to have this diversified food forest in a greenhouse situation. So we have to, we have to think much more preventatively in, in a monoculture system. Than we would if we had that forest or we had that savanna or we had that swamp.

Yeah, and management is very different, like you said, outdoors than indoors, so we shouldn't approach them the same way. It's a completely different perspective. So I appreciate you highlighting that. So speaking of spore pressure, and you said, you know, that powdery mildew specifically is ubiquitous, so there's probably going to be some spores in every facility. What's the difference? Because to give some context here, I put up a recent snippet of my conversation with Dr. Punja talking about mycotoxins and powdery mildew, and there was a lot of pushback with people saying there should— you should never have powdery mildew in your room, you should never harvest a plant that has powdery mildew, you're a bad grower, you know, you're normalizing molds and mildews. There was a lot of this stuff. Basically what I was trying to get across is there's no mycotoxins in powdery mildew, which is a very different but important distinction, I think. So, and this all came about because a grower reached out to me a home grower that said, hey, first-time grower, I've got a little powdery mildew on one of my plants, you know, do I have to trash the whole crop? And I said, I don't know if it has mycotoxins. That was my first concern. I reached out to you. You said powdery mildew does not have mycotoxins. I passed that along to them. And then Dr. Punja and I had also talked about that a little bit in further detail. Now, my question to you is, what's the difference between a little bit of PM on one leaf in a corner of a facility versus, or a tent or whatever, versus a plant that's completely covered in powdery mildew and is very obviously moldy? And how do we treat those differently? Because I think we need to make that distinction.

Okay, you're throwing me into the hornets' nest. So powdery mildew does not produce mycotoxins, as Dr. Poon just said. So no mycotoxins there. That doesn't mean you don't have— someone doesn't have allergies. That doesn't mean someone's non-immunocompromised or whatever.

Okay.

Okay, so powdery mildew does kill tissue. Powdery mildew is not just spores sitting on top of a leaf or a bud. Powdery mildew does cause necrosis. So, who wants to consume anything that is infected and, and causing necrosis? I don't want to, right? No customer wants to buy a product that is not a premium product, right? That being said, if there is powdery mildew on something and you consume it, unless you have some allergy or some sensitivity activity, right? It's, it's not going to hurt you, but no, we, we don't want those diseases. We don't want powdery mildew. We don't want botrytis. We don't want any of those, even if they don't make mycotoxins. It's just not something we want because you're not going to get the quality product. Your plant is not going to photosynthesize effectively if it can't receive light because powdery mildew is so bad. Your question is, when do you, would you abandon a grow, right? If there is a plant on the corner— was that your question?

Where does it move from being something that I can physically remove a few leaves to being this is unsafe and you should just start over, I guess?

Okay, so the word safe— now see here, this is where we're splitting hairs, right? So your biggest risk as a grower is that when you see powdery mildew, you're seeing hundreds of thousands of spores. If you can look across press a planting and see white, you have millions and millions of spores, and you can't manage it at that point, okay? It's only going to get worse if each one of those spores causes a new infection. It's out of control. If you have one plant in a corner that's starting to show symptoms, okay, if you're a home grower, you can clip off a few leaves, you can, you can use, I don't know, an SAR product, or you can try to manage it. If it's out of control, some decisions you have to make. With a lot of food crops or nursery crops or ornamentals in a lot of states, not the cannabis world, but in other crops, it's illegal to sell something that's diseased. So we're not promoting disease by any means. I hope that consumers are not wanting to buy anything like that. But when I talk to growers, my conversation with growers is about profit. And you're managing disease because you need all of those plants to produce it quickly. Crop for you. And those are two different things. So, powdery mildew doesn't cause mycotoxins, but powdery mildew affects yields. It affects plant health, and it can spread to catastrophic levels when we talk economics. So, those are different things, but at the same time, even if there are no mycotoxins caused by powdery mildew or Botrytis or many of those other plant diseases, I don't want it, right? I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna eat the moldy apple at the grocery store. So probably tastes bad, right? I don't know. I've never eaten one. In apples, we have a disease called bitter rot on fruit, and people ask me, does bitter rot taste bitter? I'm like, I don't know. So, you know, think about it that way. So you don't want plant disease for a lot of reasons, and it's only going to get worse, especially when you're dealing with powdery mildew and botrytis.

Only gonna get worse.

Now, on that note, I'm probably breathing— like, if I go outside in October here in the Pacific Northwest and there's powdery mildew all over the maples and my squash and, you know, probably my tomatoes at that point, I'm probably breathing a lot of these spores. So from an inhalation perspective, is there more risk associated with combustion and inhalation of powdery mildew? Again, using that example of maybe a few leaves in a, in a tent and I go to harvest that room and the buds look clean, is that going to be exposing me to a higher levels of risk associated with mold and mildew versus just walking outside on an October day when it's humid and there's, you know, mold spores in the air?

That's a hard one. Okay, so when you're outdoors and there's a lot of powdery mildew on plants, there's lots of other things on plants, right? If it's that dry, there's lots of dust, there's lots of things. If you are in a facility or a tent, you probably only have one or two things around there, and you'll quickly know. You'll quickly know if you're allergic or sensitive to it. And, you know, again, unless you're immunocompromised, I guess there would not be a red flag there. But, you know, if they're blowing around, they're infecting plants. So that's the key, right, is, is you're kind of looking out more for, more for more infection. But if you've got leaves that are infected and you don't see it on buds, I'm sure it's there. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of things on lots of things. It's probably there, but it's, it's only going to get worse if you leave, if you leave infected plant material there. Again, it's a, it's a numbers game with these molds and mildews, as we call them. It's a numbers game. And so when you see it, it's probably out of control already.

Okay. Have you seen any research on combustion and inhalation of powder and mildew or any of these cannabis pathogens, um, from a health or risk perspective? I'm not— and, and to be clear, even if you say no, we're not encouraging or saying that these things are safe, but I'm just curious where the research lands as of right now.

I have not seen that. And probably more of our research on those types of things comes from the tobacco industry, right? So really when it comes to pyrolysis, that probably lands more in line with pesticides. Um, you remember everyone, remember the Rally and Eagle, the diclobutanil fungicides?

Eagle 20.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, that, that's really where the danger came in, right? Is once it was ignited, once it was heated. So you can think about it like that. So pathogens, I am not aware of any. I'm not aware. It's unlikely, but I'm not aware.

So I know they do microbial testing in a lot of states for regulated products. Would powdery mildew show up because the spores do require living tissue? Tissue, or would it just not? Because I believe the way they test it is by culture. And so if it needs living tissue, it wouldn't show up, correct?

That is correct. So a lot of these, these testings, these, these total yeast and molds, I think what, or microbial load, different states call them different things. But yes, they do plate. So they will agitate plant tissue in water, and then they will do, they will plate out some of that water, and they'll plate it on a petri dish with, I don't know what kind of agar, probably like a PDA or something, and then they count the total number of colonies. So they don't know what they're looking at. They're just counting total number of colonies, and there's, there's some threshold. Okay, everybody does it different, but in general, that's what's happening. And so powdery mildew is obligate. Obligate means it needs live tissue to complete its life cycle. So you're never going to culture powdery mildew. It's never going to show up on your total yeast and molds. But Botrytis would be really happy with a petri dish full of nutritious agar. And then other pathogens will grow very, very slowly. So your Botrytis and your Trichodermas, they will— Fusaria, they grow really fast. So if you have some slower growing things, it could be worse things. But if they're slower growing, they might not show up because they'd be overtaken by the faster growing colonies. So whatever that timeline is for those testing labs, they give it whatever, 24 hours or 48 hours, and then they would do their count and that's the end. So powdery mildew would not show up, but we can segue if you want to.

Yeah, that's a perfect segue into what do we need to do to improve our regulations from a pathology perspective? Was you, were you thinking of a different segue?

I was thinking of a different topic, but we could do both.

Okay. Well, remind me of the next topic then when we finish this one.

So in terms of regulation, so we are doing lots of work. Those of us, and I say universities, but there are other people who do research as well. I'm at a university, so I always say universities. But we, we are doing the research. And so we need regulators to really pay attention to what we're seeing. Uh, we try to publish everything we can, um, and as quickly as we can in peer-reviewed journals, right? So we have a big survey, for example. And one thing, and this is a hornet's nest, I'm, I'm stepping myself into it, but we're not seeing Aspergillus. So we're not seeing aflatoxin.

That's, that's wonderful news.

That's wonderful news.

That's wonderful news, right? But we're not seeing that. So as we see these regulations, are we testing for the right things? That's a big question, and we have to get researchers at the table with regulators, and that's something that's not quite happened yet. So we have to test for the right things. And then I, I am education, so anybody at the university level, we're education, we're not regulatory, but we have to always think about it as education. So this isn't about shutting someone's grow down. This is about getting them back on track so that they can be successful. But we, we have to be able to communicate all of these sources. And we're just not there yet. We're not there between the research and the regulatory. And so I would love to see that expand. And, uh, several of us have been trying, but there's just not a lot of us, right? And I guess regulatory have their hands full doing their jobs. So it's been really difficult. Not pointing fingers, but we have a lot of work to do.

Yeah. And, uh, growers are already taxed to death, you know, tested to death. I think what you're saying is that it's not so much that we need more testing, we need to be testing the right things for really making sure that the product that's being produced is clean and safe versus what we're testing right now. And that's, I mean, Oregon is a great example of what you're talking about with Aspergillus, you know, everyone suddenly failed because they changed their Aspergillus recommendation requirements. But what you're saying is that— because aflatoxins are very scary. I watched a whole seminar on Aspergillus from, from the Oregon, uh, department, and it was terrifying. It made me want to never grow again, honestly. But you're saying you're not seeing it in cannabis in reality, which is phenomenal. So I, I just want to highlight that. Yeah.

And there are different Aspergillus species. Guess what? We can always find Aspergillus. We can always find Alternaria. But no, if you open a petri dish in the room right now, you're going to pick up Aspergillus, right? So, not all Aspergillus is the same. We've got to be able to differentiate, and we've got to be able to help growers. We've got to be able to help growers at the very beginning, at the early planting season, and that's what we need to do so critically, that we don't wait until there's suddenly a failed test and everyone says, "Oh no!" We need to get more education out there, but then we also have to communicate better with regulators and get to get the right tests and to do it at the right time, give growers those options.

Well, that's a good segue into testing, or was there another topic that you had written down that you were thinking of?

Okay, so I was going to— I wrote it down so I didn't forget. So one project that we have going on here, so we heard a lot of growers saying that they were afraid to use biologicals, especially those that were alive.

Yeah.

They were afraid to use them because they might fail their mold and mildew test or their microbial load test because in theory, those products are living and they would colonize the, the bud or the plant. And then once you would plate them out, they would grow. Okay, so this, this started us and I'll have a lot more information, but preliminary results are telling us bacillus products. So we all know our different bacillus products. Bacillus is living even in the field in hot, dry summer. It's living at least to the 6-week mark, so we can, we can pull it out. But the, the Trichoderma products, right, within a week it drops to half, within 2 weeks we're not detecting it at all.

So when you say you can pull it out, that means you're saying Bacillus is persisting on the leaf.

Still alive.

6 weeks later. So we'd have to work backwards and say maybe Bacillus species, we can't apply them once we flip the flag. Whereas Trichoderma, in theory, we could use a little bit further into the plant life cycle if we needed to.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking, right? And then none of them are increasing, so none of them are colonizing. They're all dropping in numbers. So if you look at some labels, you'll see that reapplication every 7 days or lower rate at higher intervals is better than a very high application And, you know, so, so that's what we're looking at. So that's a new product— project of ours. So we have it, we have a year in the field and 2 years in the greenhouse.

So next time I see you, Dad, I'll have all of—

I'll have all of the data. I'll be excited to talk.

Maybe at the conference this year in August. In August, you'll have it by then?

I'll have— I won't have my full second year of data because we'll still have our second year in the field, but we'll have enough. We'll be able to talk about it.

Okay, that would be great. Yeah, I think that's a That's a good topic to maybe segue into this idea of, um, using biological controls. What, what would I want to use a Bacillus, Bacillus subtilis product for versus Trichoderma? Or is it a good idea, in your opinion, to sort of like— would I tank mix this? Would I, um, want to apply these pretty early on in the plant stage as just a sort of exclusionary product or an antagonistic product to a lot of these cannabis pathogens?

Okay, so Bacillus is not just Subtilis, right? So, we have several different, we have 3 major species of Bacillus that we're using for biological controls. There are lots of biological control products out there. The Streptomyces are doing really well lately. And the Bacillus products are also doing well. So, some of them will be SAR products, so they'll induce resistance. Others will have both antagonistic and SAR properties. 40s. I have a, I have a publication that I am going to send to you so we can have down in the description. So we've kind of parsed all of that out, but one thing about biologicals— so anybody watching who is used to traditional conventional pesticides, they work instantly. So, right, they have a very different mode of action than our biologicals. Our biologicals are slow, our biologicals are very soft, but they're not, they're not as rigid and rugged as we're used to when we talk about conventional products. So we can't wait till we have disease and expect them to work. Our biologicals must be used preventatively. And if I can say anything to anybody watching today, it is keep records. Keep lots and lots of records. Know what you had last year. Know what you had last time. Know exactly and remember it so that way you can use biologicals as preventatives. Okay, really important that you use them as preventatives and that you're also using cultural practices. So integrated pest management, integrated disease management. It means you're integrating lots of the tools, like as we say, all the tools in your toolbox, you're integrating them all into your pest management program. So that means humidity control, that means resistance or tolerance in your cultivars, that means timing, it means plant health, it means air circulation, it means all of those things, roguing and pruning, sweeping the floors. It's really surprising the dirty greenhouses that I I see. It's just shocking, right? Fallowing between crops, sanitizing the walls and benches in between crops, cleaning your shears, right? So, all of those things integrate in, and biological control agents are one part of that big toolbox of tools. And if we don't have all of those pieces, then these persistent fungi— we keep talking about powdery mildew and Botrytis and Fusarium today because those are the persistent ones, and they're going to overcome. So we have to put, put everything at it. And we can do that. It's not really that hard once you have a system.

That makes total sense. One question, and you said the word roguing, which was not something I'm familiar with. Can you just—

means throw the plant away, get it out, cut your losses, curl it.

Curl it, curl it. Okay. Yes.

Curl it, curl it. Okay. Right. Every industry has like a different word. No. So getting rid of plants, cut your losses. Because a diseased plant is going to produce enough inoculum to inoculate and to spread to so many other healthy plants. So if you cut your loss on one plant or one zone or one cultivar, you can save others. And trust me, sometimes you have to really, you have to really decide at what level you're going to cut your losses and don't wait one more day or one more week or one more month because a lot of times you know, we usually talk about that with viruses, like get it out. But, you know, you, your example of the home grower with a tent and there were some powdery mildew on a few leaves, that's better than nothing, right? Removing anything is better. Removing it, right? And you can start by removing leaves and then do other things, right? And then put your fungicide on and then increase circulation and then then adjust your humidity. So, right, it's all those pieces together.

Yeah. And when you say fungicide, just for people listening, that could be something like an oil-based product too. It doesn't have to be— you don't have to think of like a toxic chemical application. It's just anything that kills a fungus.

So anything that kills a fungus. That's right. So when I say fungicide, it doesn't mean specifically conventional.

My brain goes to like large-scale ag nasty chemical. I just wanted to clarify that.

Yes, that is right. So fungicide means organic or, well, there's no conventional fungicides listed for cannabis, uh, hemp or marijuana. So that's out right there. So when I say fungicide, it absolutely means biological or biorational. So, right, that would be the oils, that would be, uh, the sulfurs, that would be the coppers. So those aren't biological, right? They're not alive. So So two different, two different classifications, but not those conventionals that you buy at the hardware store. So yes, but again, we'll get that publication link so that everybody can see the wide range of what's available now. And so that's looking good. We're seeing a lot more, um, we're seeing a lot more on the market and their formulations are improving. We're understanding more about them.

That's amazing. You brought up the term SAR and we've been talking about back and forth, but I wanted to kind of back up a little. SAR stands for systemic acquired resistance and sort of this, the plant's immune system and its ability to fight off disease. And you can kind of prime it with some of these biologicals, as I understand it. Can you kind of just touch on what that process looks like?

Yeah. So your SARs— so by the way, if you overuse an SAR, you can stop the growth of a plant. Let me not forget to say that. That. Okay, don't overuse it, follow directions. But your, your SARs, a systemic acquired resistance or immune response or induced immunity, lots of ways we can say that. So that's really what it's doing, right? It's inducing a plant's ability to fight off pathogens. They do not work in a vacuum. Okay, you can't just use SARs and suddenly you have immunity. It's not like vaccinations today.

I was going to use the vaccination example. So it's a little bit like a vaccine.

It's a little bit—

it—

no, it— yeah, yeah, I guess it's a little bit like a vaccine. But you know, some of our vaccines work absolutely, and others work, uh, the flu won't be as bad if you get the flu shot. Yeah. So, but SARs don't work in a vacuum. They are combined with other things. But you do have several of our biologicals that have both SAR properties and antagonistic properties. Okay, sometimes that, that, uh, induced resistance will come from the actual living, living microbe. Sometimes it will come from the fermentation byproducts that are part of the formulation. There's a very vast array, but SARs, we usually use a lot of SARs with coppers. We can, so we, we're learning now to mix our SARs with other products, even conventional products in other crops. So we're learning more about SARs, but they don't work alone. So use them. There's lots of data supporting them, but they need to be used in an integrated management system.

My first thought went to Kaidan or Kaidosan products for SARs, but I know we haven't talked brands. Been kind of avoiding that intentionally. Can you give some examples of SAR products or ingredients in SAR products?

You're going to catch me like really off guard here, right?

I know.

Let's see. So some of our SARs would be, geez, so Bacillus mycoides. Okay. So I'm going to say a brand, Lifeguard. Lifeguard has SAR properties. The Bacillus subtilis will have both antagonistic and SAR properties. So that might be Serenade or Companion. Okay, so that's just some examples.

Does C. fall into that category too?

C. is— okay, bacillus. So we were talking about species and we didn't even talk about taxonomy, at least not on the podcast. You and I talked about it before we went live. Taxonomists change species for a lot of product, a lot of the time. So the bacillus products have gone through some changes. So, C. double nickel, Stargus, Trafflon, those are no longer subtlests. I think at one point they were all subtlests and they've kind of moved.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Okay. Yeah. So, and again, I'll send you the cheat sheet so that everybody can kind of look at it and see which ones are which. Let me say before I forget that just because you've got a certain genus species in that microbial product, There are isolates. Okay. There are specific strains that certain companies have patented. And so, C-Sys is not the same as Double Nickel, is not the same as Stargus, for example, because those are different strains that those companies have patented. Understand that they're not all the same. So try them out, try what you've got. There are a lot of products are improving, formulations are improving, and we're understanding more how to use them. I am, for those of you who grow more than just, more than just cannabis, I do have a series that's coming out right now. We in fact are uploading them this week. So for all of our fruits and our vegetables.

Oh, wonderful.

So that'll help you kind of understand how to use those organic products and how to use them in combination with one another. And we're hoping the next thing we do is looking at how to combine them with our conventional products. Products. So some people may want to use more of these products before fruiting or flowering. And then once, once that edible or that consumable product is, is starting to develop, to back away from it. So people use things differently. So yes, but we're learning more about our products. So just kind of be aware that things change all the time. So always check back, but we do have a recent publication. And there's not much out there.

Yeah, I want to highlight that because research does show different efficacy with different products, even if they're all Bavaria products or all mycorrhizal products or whatever the microbe is in, in general. So I think it's important that people try different things and realize that, like, at least with mycorrhizal fungi, for example, if you're buying a different species from a company, you'll get one that maybe might have better drought resistance, but another one that may offer more nutrient uptake because they are so different. It's just, you know, it's like you said, it's a classification thing and people need to realize these products are all gonna have different efficacy.

And shelf life. If something is alive in a bottle, make sure it's fresh. If, um, if it's on a dusty shelf, it's probably not viable anymore. So a lot of these you can order directly from the manufacturer. Yeah.

That's nice.

So think about that as well. There's really good tech supports with a lot of these products, and that is because they want you to have the freshest product out there. Out there, especially when your bottom line depends on it, right? So, um, a backyard garden is very— or basement grow or tent grow is very different than a commercial facility. Yeah, so the stakes are higher. So if you are listening and you are a commercial grower, go to the manufacturer as much as possible when, when your dollar is on the line.

Absolutely. And I would just say the same goes for getting beneficial insects. We want this stuff fresh, direct from insectary. And I think microbial products are getting better but historically spore counts have, have not lined up with what's on the label for a lot of these products. And so, third-party testing has, has been, it's been really hard on that industry, but we are seeing improvement.

We are. Yeah, I agree.

Um, okay. Well, we kind of jumped around a lot today. I feel like we covered most of it. Uh, for the sake of time and not keeping you on, on the line forever here, I thought we could do our quick, uh, this is a little added segment that you and I discussed, this little pathology lightning round. So just, uh, a few quick questions I'm gonna throw at you and you give me a short answer and then we'll, we'll wrap it up.

Okay.

All right. If you could magically eliminate one pathogen from the cannabis supply chain tomorrow, which would it be?

It would be Fusarium head blight because of the mycotoxins.

And just to clarify, what I think Dr. Punja was calling Fusarium bud rot is what you're calling Fusarium head blight. Light. Same, same.

Yeah, probably, probably so. Yeah, it depends, you know, we would have to compare notes, but it's highly likely that's the same thing.

And interestingly enough, you mentioned that color may not be enough to determine species or if it is indeed Fusarium. Is that—

am I saying that is correct? Get a diagnostic— get a diagnosis, sorry, get a diagnostic report. You have to You have to know, and you have to keep notes, so don't lose it. Keep notes. And then someone will help you.

And I think you said earlier in this interview that you can actually, if you're knowledgeable, you could actually tell from looking at it under a hand lens or like a Dino-Lite, some sort of magnification, you'd be able to tell if that was Fusarium versus Botrytis. Is that right?

Yes. Yes. That's right.

So I'm excited.

We'll do it in Montana, right?

I am excited for that. I can't, I have to tell you.

I do something really nerdy and yeah, so.

Wonderful. Okay. All right. So sanitation, bleach, 70% ethanol, Virkon, I'll throw in there. What's your favorite sanitation for pruning shears?

Like, okay, I can't say a brand. I like bath—

well, I said Virkon.

You can say a brand.

It's fine.

Okay. I don't do bleach on my tools because they corrode and it gets all over me. Okay. I like, I'm gonna say, Lysol Concentrate, like in the black, little black bottle. It smells really bad. It smells like hospitals, you know, so it's probably my favorite even though the smell is awful. I mean, you've got some commercial products out there that all work well. I like the idea that people are using anything versus nothing, so use something. If you are a small grower, I like Scrubbing Bubbles. So it is a soap and an antimicrobial and it works very well. So you can have it in a can, you don't have to have a sloshing bucket. So those are my favorites.

That was my next question, would be like, for the home grower, what common household product do you think is the best? So you're saying Scrubbing Bubbles?

I like Scrubbing Bubbles.

Dip it in that, then dip it in water, and then we're—

No, you don't have to dip it in water. You don't have to rinse anything. The only reason you're rinsing bleach is because it's corroding your tools. So 10% bleach works. I don't personally like it because of the mess. You can use some of the commercial things like Oxidate Sanidate because they can be be used to clean your tools, to clean your facility, to spray your plants, to treat seeds. So if you're investing in something like that, or you can just use rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, anything's better than nothing. I want to see a sanitation plan more than a specific product.

Awesome.

All right.

Does hydrogen peroxide dip actually work for cleaning up infested clones, or is it just a band-aid.

It's all a band-aid. Once infection occurs, all you're treating is what's on the outside, no matter what you're doing, right? Even if, uh, so we don't have synthetic systemic products in this industry, so everything is a band-aid. That's why we're spraying so often. When we're spraying a lot of these products, all we get is what's on the outside. So it could be a hitchhiker— that would be good, it's cleaning up your, your, your cuttings, for example. Or once you have infection, all your fungicides— and I'm saying fungicide again, this is my blanket term. All you're doing is knocking back that sporulation that's on the outside so it can't go anywhere else. Infection's already occurred. You're not getting in that plant. You're not curing it. No fungicide is curative, by the way. So that's my soapbox. Nothing is curative. Everything's a Band-Aid.

Yeah, and we do have dip rates for certain fungicides. Specifically, the ones that I'm familiar with are Soffoil X in Canada, which is mineral-based. There's a dip rate for it on the label. And then the newer product that I've been using, recommending, is Epic Shield from BioWorks. That's another one that has dip rates. But this, but I think the idea of dipping clones, and we can take the word infested or infected out of it, is just good practice for bringing in new plants into your facility for pests and for pathogens and pests, I would say.

So, you know, before all of these products were on the market, even pathologists in sterile labs labs, they just used running water. Just running water will wash it off. And I tell everybody that even in their facilities, washing soap is better than nothing. You'd be really surprised. We wash our hands every day. We're not using antimicrobials, we're just using soap. It's washing away most of what's on the outside.

I love that. That's great. Is it possible for a plant to be a silent carrier of Fusarium without showing any symptoms for its entire life? Lifecycle?

Your life cycle? I don't know the answer to that. I guess anything is possible. But what we have, we have what we call latent infection. That's the time between infection and symptom development. Generally, when you have ideal conditions, that's when you're going to see that, that fungus or that pathogen is going to say, "Oh, it's time to sporulate." It's got to carry on its life cycle. It's what it does, right? So sometimes, some diseases, there's a really long incubation period or latent period between infection and symptom development. I guess it's possible. I doubt nothing. Sometimes I see things that really surprise me. So yeah, I guess I'll give it a yes with a question mark.

I like this one. Which is more dangerous for Botrytis, high humidity in the day or a rapid temperature drop at night?

It depends what that temperature is. Botrytis likes high humidity and cool temperatures. So whichever one gives it closer to those optimal conditions. But once it starts sporulating, it's almost impossible to manage. It can get really severe.

Brings up another question. That I had, which is I've always thought that Botrytis spread really quickly for as far as pathogens go. So like, if you see it in a room, you pretty much want to harvest or come up with a plan that day because you can't wait. If you wait over the weekend, you could lose significantly more of your crop. Is that, uh, pretty accurate for how this, the life cycle of this pathogen is?

Again, it depends what you're giving it, right? Can you drop the humidity? Like really quickly, can you turn up the heat? I'm in Kentucky. We do not, I cannot find Botrytis outdoors. I can only, on cannabis, I can only find it in the greenhouse in the spring. So yes, heat will, heat will shut it down. So a lot of things can shut it down. But if you're not going to change those environmental conditions, yes, you can wake up in the morning and find exponential increase in disease from Botrytis. Botrytis. It's fast and it's very efficient.

Come to Washington, I can show you a lot of Botrytis.

Yes, you have exactly the conditions it loves. Yeah.

All right, what is one thing a grower should never do when they first spot mold in their room?

Mold? Just any mold? I tell you what they should do is they should monitor the environmental conditions. What they should never do is walk away and ignore it and forget about it and assume that a spray or some— or one thing is going to get get rid of it. It's there because conditions were right, so they need a plan immediately. So don't ignore it. That's what— that's my answer.

Got that. So for your solution is fix the conditions that allowed it to show up in the first place with what you're going to do moving forward.

Yeah. So, you know, you know the meme with the overflowing bathtub and there's the guy that's like, you know, he's got the bucket and he's trying to stop the flood but he won't turn off the faucet?

Yeah. All right, wonderful. Well, I learned a ton today. I really appreciate your time, and I look forward to meeting you in person, uh, in August at the conference. Yeah, thank you again. Okay.

That was Dr. Nicole Gauthier with the University of Kentucky, and you are listening to the Cannabis Cultivation and Science Podcast. If you're planning on joining us in Bozeman for the conference the last weekend in August, you'll get to see much more of Dr. Gauthier's research and meet her in person. For those of you who haven't registered yet, you can find all the details and tickets at kisorganics.com. And don't forget to check out the podcast page on our website as well. Just click on the Learn tab and then Podcast. And if you want access to podcasts as soon as they are recorded, along with additional content and video and a private Discord channel, we do have a Patreon, Patreon account available. The Kiss Organics website also offers a wide variety of soil amendments, lighting fixtures, beneficial insects, and the highest quality commercial soils on the market. We carefully research all the products we offer and manufacture to make sure they are science-based and meet our standard of quality. Thanks for listening.