TOMATO VIRUS ALERT

This virus, the tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBREV) currently affects countries close to France and large producers of tomatoes such as Spain or Italy, but also the Netherlands, Greece and the United Kingdom.

Belonging to the family of tobamoviruses, this "rough brown tomato fruit virus" is specialized, that is to say that only tomatoes, peppers and peppers, but also eggplants, petunias, tobacco and wild plants are sensitive to it.

If it poses no danger to human health, the ToBRFV virus worries producers for several reasons. First of all, it affects tomatoes and peppers in a very visible way of the mosaics appearing on the leaves of yellow spots on the fruits which can also have a characteristic rough surface. Result: they simply become impossible to market.

Then its mode of propagation is alarming. The virus spreads once in the plant, from cell to cell until it completely invades. The fruits, but also the plants and seeds will remain infectious for months, on any type of support, which explains the spread of the virus across the planet.

"It is a very stable, persistent virus. When it is spotted, it is therefore necessary to go through a crawl space step, ”specifies Philippe Reignault. Concretely: it is necessary to uproot the plants, burn them, and stop cultivating the place until decontamination of the greenhouse or the soil. Germany and the United States have taken drastic measures to eradicate it. The other affected countries have not yet succeeded.

The Health Agency recommends that the French authorities extend the regulations already in force to infected fruits, and to guarantee that the imported plants all come from regions known to be free from the virus. It also calls for strengthening controls and the implementation of a monitoring plan.

It is "crucial," writes the Agency, "to rapidly report the presence" of the virus in production areas, in order to initiate "rapid and determined action to eliminate it as quickly as possible. »