Curly- top virus

Symptoms

• This disease is transmitted by beet leaf hoppers. External symptoms of curly top virus infection may appear in leaves, stems, flowers, fruits, or roots of infected plants.
• Generally, mottling is absent, but infected plant parts may become distorted through curling, twisting, rolling, stunting, etc.
• Leaves become thickened and leathery. Curly top virus may impair both yield and quality of the root of an infected plant.
• Some of the most pronounced symptoms resulting from curly top virus attacks are internal and non-observable with the unaided eye.
• Such internal symptoms consist of death of the food conducting vessels, as well as of extreme variations from the normal in numbers and sizes of cells composing the plant tissues

Management

• Losses can be reduced by the use of resistant varieties;
• Adopting sanitary measures including the eradication of susceptible weeds and susceptible volunteer crop plants from a previous planting;
• Regulating the time of planting in order to avoid the main flights of the beet leafhopper;
• Use of barriers of trap crops and early removal and destruction of infected plants.
• Spraying malathion (2ml/litre of water) controls the population of beet leaf hoppers.