I asked an acquaintance I made with a CRFG member several years ago about the prospects of cleaning up FMV from a variety for me.  We had previously talked about his career in tissue culture both for a company and in his own business from which he had retired.  I told him that there had been some talk that fig plants from Agri-Starts were free of FMV.  I will take just portions of his comments here due to the personal nature of the comments that are not important to this information being shared.  My point in posting this is to possibly help explain why we sometimes see some sources of figs that seem to be healthier than the original source.  Sometimes there are claims of something being "FMV free".  Personally, I think that is very unlikely.
 
"On the web, I looked over Agri-Starts list of Ficus carica from tc and its home page but I could not find any claims of virus-tested, virus-free plants for figs.  Tissue culture/Micropropagation methods rarely result in virus-free plants because of the nature of removing large pieces of plant organs (e.g. shoot tips)."
 
"I have successfully done virus-freeing of tomatoes and cassava at my previous employment, 20 years ago, by culturing apical meristems combined with proprietary therapies for yielding virus-free plants."
 
"Sometimes micropropagated plants (figs?) are healthier than conventionally propagated plants because the plants have been freed of a systemic load of microbes (bacteria, fungi) through tissue culture.  Sometimes, the virus titer is low to begin with and kept low or latent because conditions are not ripe for symptoms to appear."
 
My friend went on to say that for him to help me would require a lot of research and that there would be a steep learning curve and it would mean he would need to come out of retirement.  Can't say I blame him. :)

Hey Harvey this has been an interesting topic for me although very controversial due to individual interests. I easily found the quote below with some simple keywords and Google:

I emailed the USDA because they have a virus infected strain of Burbanks white blackberry. Mine comes from a virus free line. I offered them cuttings and they turned me down as they planed to remove virus. The cultivar had bushy dwarf virus. So virus removal certainly is not unusual.

I have a italian 258 that is completely free of Fmv just after one here in Louisiana. Not many trees here have it seems nainly California. Most all my trees i purchased from cali seem to have it.

FP,

My WAG is that much of the visual damage is caused by the feeding of the fig mite...one cold winter and they will dissapear. What they might have left behind (virus) will stay...

In another forum, that I read but do not post on, people were saying that after removing the "infected" leaves and spraying for mites, all new growth looks good. Add in the fact that plant stress is similar in apearance to FMV's and we have likely misdiagnosis...