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Fig Mosaic Virus Education

I think some of my fig plants have signs of FMV. I really do not know much about FMV. I will appreciate if someone can educate me about FMV.

What is this? Is this serious infection of fig trees? How common is it? Does it affect fruits? If one plant has it, can others catch this infection? How can we prevent it? Is there any treatment?

Thanks a lot,

Imran
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Use the search in the top right corner. Try FMV, FMD, mosaic virus, mosaic disease. You can google it too. You'll should get plenty of reading and then you can decide for yourself if it's something to be concerned with or not. As with everything, opinions vary.
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Thank you!
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See FAQ. Short answer is that it is a fact of fig life, just like leaves. If you have figs, you have FMV.
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FMV is very common. Some trees show it one year then not the next. Most of my trees have been doing good so far this year but with all this rain we've been having the past few weeks a few are starting to show signs of it from the stress of too much water. Some believe that FMV shows itself under stressful situations as in my case of too much rain. There are countless opinions on it but for myself I don't get alarmed about it. I had a tree that WAS badly deformed from FMV, but once it was planted in ground it seemed to virtually disappear. I will get an occasional leaf that's distorted but that's about it. Being planted in ground seems to be a lot less stressful then being in a pot. What it boils down to IMO is to not worry about it, it's one of the ups and downs of fig growing.

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Originally Posted by pitangadiego
See FAQ. Short answer is that it is a fact of fig life, just like leaves. If you have figs, you have FMV.


A research paper that might be of interest. The full paper can be read or downloaded for free from:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5461047/pdf/ppj-33-288.pdf

The following is a brief abstract

Efficacy of Tissue Culture in Virus Elimination from Caprifig and Female Fig Varieties (Ficus carica L.)

Chokri Bayoudh,1,3,* Manel Elair,2 Rahma Labidi,3 Afifa Majdoub,1 Naima Mahfoudhi,4 and Messaoud Mars1,3

Abstract

Fig mosaic disease (FMD) is a viral disease that spreads in all Tunisian fig (Ficus carica L.) orchards. RT-PCR technique was applied to leaf samples of 29 fig accessions of 15 fig varieties from the fig germplasm collection of High Agronomic Institute (I.S.A) of Chatt-Mariem, to detect viruses associated to FMD. Analysis results show that 65.5% of the accessions (19/29) and 80.0% (12/15) of the fig varieties are infected by FMD-associated viruses. From all fig accessions, 41.4% of them are with single infection (one virus) and 24.1% are with multi-infections (2 virus and more). Viruses infecting fig leaf samples are Fig mosaic virus (FMV) (20.7%), Fig milde-mottle-associated virus (FMMaV) (17.25%), Fig fleck associated virus (FFkaV) (3.45%), and Fig cryptic virus (FCV) (55.17%). A reliable protocol for FCV and FMMaV elimination from 4 local fig varieties Zidi (ZDI), Soltani (SNI), Bither Abiadh (BA), and Assafri (ASF) via in vitro culture of 3 meristem sizes was established and optimized. With this protocol, global sanitation rates of 79.46%, 65.55%, 68.75%, and 70.83% respectively for ZDI, SNI, BA, and ASF are achieved. For all sanitized varieties, the effectiveness of meristem culture for the elimination of FCV and FMMaV viruses was related to meristem size. Meristem size 0.5 mm provides the highest sanitation rates ranging from 70% to 90%.

Happy reading!
Marcel
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