Education helped save EVōK Cannabis

When Omeed Javidan, co-founder & Cultivation Director of Evōk Cannabis (@evokcannabis) first encountered Hop Latent Viroid (HLVd) in 2016, he had no idea how long his relationship with the infection would last, or how it would help him become a better grower. Omeed, who nearly lost three separate grows to HLVd, is now a major proponent of sanitary and prevention SOPs for the cannabis industry.

Looking to educate himself further after having an outbreak at his commercial facility in Oklahoma City, he started engaging with TUMI Genomics on Instagram (@tumigenomics). This motivated the Evōk Cannabis founding team to entrust TUMI with its first HLVd tests, a decision that may have saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Experienced growers in Oklahoma

Omeed and his partners have been working together, growing cannabis and making extracts, for over 10 years. They dug deep for solutions to what was then known as "dudding" after suffering a severe blow to their production in 2016. Omeed discovered treatments that allowed them to survive and cope with the unnamed hop latent viroid infection at the time.

Evōk Cannabis applied for an Oklahoma medical cannabis license in 2020, and began constructing what is now a vertically integrated business, from growing to processing and retail. They thought they were taking precautions to keep HLVd out of their facility thanks to their ethical growing practices and commitment to producing high-quality products. It was only once that they broke protocol when bringing plants in from another facility, a mistake that almost cost them a whole harvest.

“I thought we would be safe, big mistake”

The podcast that helped Evōk get back on track

In the spring of 2021, a flower room at Evōk Cannabis showed some abnormalities (stunted growth, brittle branches) that Omeed and his team suspected were HLVd but were not 100% certain. They’d brought in 300 clones from a nearby tissue culture lab, believing that because it was a TC lab, the clones would be pathogen-free.

Their plants were in week 3 of flower when they first started noticing inconsistencies in growth throughout the room. It wasn’t until week 4 or 5 that they suspected they could be dealing with an HLVd outbreak. At that point, so much time and effort had been put into the room that they decided to finish the round to see what could be salvaged.

Around that same time, TUMI Genomics Chief Science Officer, Dr. Tassa Saldi, PhD, appeared in an interview with Brandon Burkhart on the We The Growers podcast, where she highlighted critical information about hop latent viroid, its consequences in cultivation rooms, and ways to avoid being economically affected by the disease. .

Omeed heard this episode and decided to order 25 HLVd testing kits to sample a group of abnormal looking plants from their flower room. All 25 results came back positive. With a majority of their 350 plant flower room exhibiting symptoms similar to the HLVd positive plants, a serious outbreak was confirmed. Although it was a difficult decision to make, they had to discard roughly ¾ of their harvest, losing close to $100,000 in total product and equipment (irrigation was replaced throughout the whole room as a safety precaution), a significant blow to any medium-sized company like Evōk Cannabis. They trashed the infected plants, cleaned rigorously, replaced irrigation systems, and started completely fresh. It was a setback that could have put them out of business.

New scientific insights

Omeed's previous experience with "dudding," aka hop latent viroid, his research into how to combat the disease, and his constant improvement of sanitary protocols in his grow put him at the forefront of knowledge about the viroid's effects and how to combat it. So when he heard about the upcoming podcast episode announcing Dr. Saldi in March 2022, he was eager to learn more about the viroid.

After listening to Dr. Saldi, Omeed decided to test for HLVd for the first time. And, while the results forced them to make difficult decisions, they knew it would have cost them far more money to continue cultivating as they were. Evōk Cannabis is now a regular customer with a certified clean grow room.

“We found the best pricing and reliable results with TUMI Genomics”

Science that builds confidence

The scientific rigor that Dr. Saldi purposefully displays is what drew Omeed to begin testing with TUMI Genomics. As a knowledgeable individual who enjoys sharing information on social media (follow him @halforganicmids on Instagram), TUMI Genomics' constant scientific education gave him the confidence to trust its tests. Furthermore, the results were delivered in less than 48 hours in an easy-to-understand format, complete with information and friendly customer support.

A long way to a clean operation

Evōk has come a long way since that first disastrous HLVd benchmark. Resetting their cultivation rooms in early 2022 was the starting point for the grow’s resurgence into what is now a healthy operation with better-than-ever yields and superior quality. After the initial reset, positivity was around 5% in two subsequent testing batches, making it simple to control by removing those few plants from the mother stock before the infection spread again through cloning. The continuous testing program initially identified only one or two more positives, while no symptoms or confirmed infections of any kind have been observed in the grow over the last eight months.

Omeed is a strong supporter of sanitary protocols in cultivation rooms, and he has even written some HLVd SOPs himself. While vetting grow rooms for Evōk’s extraction department, he has witnessed stubborn growers being affected by HLVd due to a lack of reliable testing.

“You should be aware of the risks”