This past winter I purchased a dormant 3 year old JH Adriatic tree.  Now that it is leafing out I see it is heavily infected with FMV on all branches/leaves of the main trunk about 1.5” in diameter & 5' tall.  A smaller 1/2" diameter & 3’ long side shoot has about 6 leaves that are all clean.

If I cut off the main trunk  will the remaining branch & roots remain clean?  Should I air layer the clean branch off? 

FMV is like hard drive failure on your computer...not a question of 'if', but one of when and how bad.

Most trees that are not from seed will probably be carrying it, whether they are showing symptoms or not.  Most seedling trees will be exposed to it and at least carry it, at some point.  Not all trees (not varieties...but individual trees) are affected equally.  It's more of a 'stress' indicator than anything else.  More stress equates to more symptoms (and more severe, too).  There are also certain varieties that are less tolerant than others. 

For the most part, it's biggest impacts are cosmetic, at least in a home garden setting. Fruit loss/reduction in production could matter more commercially, but even that isn't too major of an impact.

And as to your question about propagating...not worth it, as yes the whole thing (except maybe the meristem...if you want to try tissue culture) will be infected.  Virus free trees are hard to come by and don't stay that way very long when exposed to ones (most of whats around already) that are infected.

Leave it alone, let it grow, see if the symptoms go away.

IN MY OPINION - FMV is often named for a whole bunch of fig leaf issues which may or may not be accurate.  FMV like symptoms and real FMV symptoms will frequently disappear with growth.  I am not saying that FMV will disappear, I am saying the symptoms may disappear with growth.

Purists/elites say they do not want any tree with any FMV symptoms.  I say all fig trees are most likely infected.  If you, or anyone else, does not want a fig tree with FMV symptoms, contact me, I will take it/them.

This is my opinion, you can state yours, I will not respond to your statement, you have your opinion, I have mine, no statements will change either of our minds.

We are talking about 2 things, FMV virus tree, and fig bud mites damaged leaves.

Somebody say it, All trees come with FMV virus, if it is true, I do not think that you can have FMV virus free tree for long due to bugs love leaves including fig leaves.

From what you are telling me, your tree seem have Fig bud mites.
You should check for your tree for fig bud mites with x50+ loupe, If you find them, you should treat them, Once it is treated, fig tree will grow fast

I think that Fig bud mites cause nutrition deficiency problem on leaves, Heavy infected do damage branches as well, FMV damaged leaves can not be reverted as same as branches but branch do grow a new inner layer each year to take over its function, If fig tree is slow growing, People cut it down and new grow branches will restore its function and grow faster.

Here is tree with fig bud mites damaged leaves, treated it,  new healthy leave grow from penny size in full size in 2 week fast, However, mite eggs hatch, I need 2nd spray later, fig bud mites are very tough.

ricky, what did you spray it with? thank you

Hi Joe:

I am in Canada where only limited pesticides are allow, I used malathion to spray my trees, It kills garden spiders and ants and Alpids as well.
I do not think that it can completed clear all mites, At winter time, I will treat soils and trees with sulphur and put all tree at cold outdoor, it might kill all mites.
I got FMV from nursery trees, I will not order any trees from them.

Via NMSU:
Fig mosaic can cause symptoms on both leaves and fruit. On leaves, mosaic spots are distinctly yellow, contrasting with normal green color of the foliage. The margins of the yellow spots blend gradually from a light yellow color into the dark green of healthy tissue. Mosaic spots or lesions may be uniformly scattered over the surface of the leaves or may appear as irregular patches of light green diffused widely throughout the leaf blade. Later in the season, a rust-colored band develops along the border of the mosaic spots, apparently caused by the death of epidermal or subepidermal cells. Deformed leaves may occur on the same twig as normal leaves. Mosaic spots on fruits are very similar to those on leaves, but less conspicuous. Premature fruit drop may also occur in certain cultivars. Infected Calimyrna trees seem to produce smaller and fewer fruit. Black Mission is the most seriously damaged cultivar; Kadota and Calimyrna are the least affected. Ficus palmata, or trees derived from seedlings having F. palmata as the male parent, appear to be immune to mosaic. Fig mosaic is vectored by the eriophyid mite Aceria fici; feeding by a single mite is sufficient to transmit the virus to a healthy seedling of F. carica. The virus can also be transmitted by grafting, but it is not seed borne.

Management: For tree propagation material, choose trees that do not show symptoms of mosaic. Examine propagated young plants carefully for symptoms of mosaic before planting them in the field. Never plant fig cultivars that are propagated from mosaic-infected trees. Controlling fig mites may help reduce incidence of this disease

The viruses that cause fig mottling disease (FMD) are normally isolated from leaf tissue. Viral RNA from the more prevalent viruses, like FMV, has been detected in other fig tissues including roots. In an infected tree, the assumption is the virus is in all its cells.

As reported by Flock and Wallace in 1957, eriophyid mites can transfer mosaic disease in less than 10 days.

http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.org/landingpage.cfm?articleid=ca.v011n01p12

Mites are impossible to see, for me anyway, without magnification. So, they are easy to miss. It is possible that you have fig mites in your growing area and the mosaic disease was transferred from one or more of your infected plants. If a tree is infected with any FMD causing virus, elimination mites, assuming they are present, will NOT eliminate the virus(es) from that tree. Eliminating mites should prevent spread of virus variants within your collection of trees.

Because FMV is an RNA virus and RNA viruses normally have error-prone polymerases, there are lots of minor variants of FMV. A publication published in 2016 showed as much as 16% RNA sequence variation across 34 FMV isolates in genetic sequence databases. It is not known how each variant might impact mottling disease. Just to make things yet more complex, at least 9 additional fig viruses that cause mottling have been identified in the past few years causing the disease to be referred to by the scientists as fig mosaic (or mottling) disease, FMD for short. They are:

Fig Leaf Mottle-Associated Virsus 1 & 2  (FLMaV 1 & 2)

Fig Mild Mottle-Associated Virus  (FMMaV)

Fig Latent Virus 1  (FLV-1)

Arkansas Fig Closterovirus 1 & 2  (AFCV 1 & 2)

Fig Badnavirus-1  (FBaV 1)

Fig Cryptic Virus  (FCV)

Fig Fleck Associated Virus (FFkaV)

Several of the above viruses are also RNA viruses with meaningful variation between different isolates just to make the puzzle more annoying. Most of these viruses can apparently be clear an infected tree with scientific methods (heat therapy and/or meristem tip culture in vitro). One of the viruses is a retrovirus that has inserted its genome into the plant's DNA and can not be cured by any method if present.

The Falk lab at UC Davis and the Martelli lab in Italy were the 2 groups to isolate and get the genetic sequence of FMV.

http://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/pdf/10.1094/PDIS-93-1-0004

http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/90/5/1281.full.pdf+html

It appears that FMV is not transmitted in seedlings. However, FLV-1 is reported to be transmitted in seedlings. I do not know about the other viruses.

http://sipav.org/main/jpp/index.php/jpp/article/view/563

Reports are starting to appear of efforts to screen trees across broad areas for FMV and other viruses. The ones that I have seen find FMV broadly distributed with a lot of variation in the distribution of the other fig viruses. They are using PCR based methods to detect. My guess is they are getting some false negatives even when >90% rates of infection are found.

I hope this is useful. Good luck with your figs!

Thanks all for your responses, before I posted I searched the forum and read many posts by folks much more knowledgeable than me regarding fig tree diseases.

The folks who say all fig trees contain FMV and you should "just live with it", may be correct if you are a collector of fig trees, but I consider myself a gardener and am not used to having sick fruit trees, which seem to have less vigor, lower production and possibly infect other healthy fig trees in my garden.

 From my limited perspective and just my opinion,  not all fig trees have FMV.  I say this because I have been growing a few unknown fig trees for over 40 years, my friends, relatives all in the NY metro area grow one or two unknowns for the fruit, I have been around fig trees since I was a child, I have never seen any signs of FMV until I recently got "bite with the fig collector bug" by this forum and the fun of owning different varieties, but now I  I'm thinking I would have been better off with just a few healthy unknowns, the jury is still out.

 Maybe in my area since the trees get cold in winter, this helps prevent diseases/bugs, also these trees grown by immigrants (which is mostly found through the NY metro area) would not have been keep if not healthy so these could be species that are naturally more resistant than trees from warmer parts of the our country. 

Also most collectors that I have seen, buy trees/cuttings from all over the place, perhaps many contain bugs/diseases not normally natural for our environment. From what I have seen these small trees are usually keep very physically close to each other, basically touching each other I believe these close quarter & perhaps unnatural greenhouse environment propagates the fig problems we see.

This may offend some people but I am starting to think that perhaps we fig "collectors" are doing more of a disservice by passing around unhealthy fig trees and polluting the healthy trees that have been producing for many years.

In any case I think I will chop out and discard most of this 3 year old JH Adriatic because I just don't like the way it looks, I will keep some of the other small trees that show just minor signs of FMV and hope they grow out of it.

FMV or the more 'recent' naming as FMD has been around and to some degree, been 'infecting' all fig trees for a very long time.

From my research on it, all but newly grown seedlings, that are grown in isolation, will have it.  The seedlings, once exposed to the 'field' stand a very good chance of picking it up within days of putting them out.  So by the time they are at fruit bearing age, they too will be infected.

The most recent research supports the near 100% infection rate.  And the more varieties/samples tested the more confirmed the very widespread 'infection' rates become.

Since figs are not a big money crop in the US & Europe, there is not a lot of grant money available to support scientific study on the interplay of the viruses associated with mottling disease and plant health. Though not studied, an intriguing possibility is that infection by one or more of these viruses might affect the flavor of a particular tree in a very positive way. A lot of people find Black Madeira one of the best. I agree. Yet every Black Madeira I've seen clearly has really significant FMD. Until someone can get a collection of several varietals cured of virus and compare products between the infected & uninfected trees, we won't know.

There is a lot of concern about mite transmission of virus(es) that cause mottling disease. My take is that mite transmission problems are less common than some people believe. If someone has a collection of trees that are infected with an array of viruses and has meaningful mite transmission of disease, you'd anticipate that over a season or two every tree would get infected with every virus within that collection and, if one tree crashes, they all should over time. As I read peoples' comments about the problems they encounter, what I see is that it is almost always about a single tree or two, not an entire collection. There is no simple way to know for sure. I throw this out simply as another way to look at the problem.

It is true that many (most?) of the FMD associated viruses do not transmit through seeds. It is also true that fig seeds do not breed true. You typically do not get the same tree from a seed as the parent. If I recall correctly, Jon's excellent Raspberry Latte came from a seed. So, winners do happen.

As always, I hope this is helpful.

It was first observed less than 100 years ago, and was most likely much less common then than it is today. Like Ray and many, many, other people have said, virus symptoms are virtually non-existent on trees found growing on the east coast.

 And the seedlings you mentioned? TC plants that have been virus indexed? undergone thermotherapy? The ones discovered to be free from virus in many surveys using pcr analysis around the world? Alma, Hamma? Even without expensive testing there is a clear difference between symptomatic and non-symptomatic trees, there is no in for a penny in for a pound here. The symptoms have been found to be directly correlated with amount of virus present in the plant cells, the particles need to be so numerous that they begin to actually gum up the works of the cells in order to cause any symptoms. The more virus, the more severe the symptoms. FMV has been shown to not be transmissible by sap, and can only migrate through the plant between adjacent cells, but the fig bud mite not only transmits virus from plant to plant it also rapidly increases the spread of virus in any one plant. Because virus replication and cell division are not tied together the amount of initial virus in a newly divided cell can increase or decrease. Rapid cell division relative to virus replication reduces the viral load, this is the reason thermotherapy works, the virus is denatured by heat and unable to replicate so each cell division cuts the number of viruses in half until none remain and virus free material is collected from the new growth.