Mosaic Virus
Leaves take on a blotchy light-and-dark green mottle, often with puckering, cupping, or narrow strap-shaped new growth, and the whole plant is stunted. This is a virus. There is no treatment and no spray, and an infected plant stays infected for life.
Disease checklist
Four things to look for. If most of them match what you are holding, you are in the right place.
What gets rid of it
Gentlest option first. For most backyard cases the first one is enough, so try these in order and stop as soon as it works. If you do spray something, the product label tells you how — please read the notice further down.
1Remove and destroy the plant
Bag it and put it in the trash. There is no cure and it will not grow out of it.
Try this first2Wash hands and tools
Tobacco mosaic survives on hands, clothes and blades. Wash with soap after handling tobacco or a sick plant, and disinfect tools.
3Clear perennial weeds
Weeds around the garden edge hold these viruses over winter and feed them back in each spring.
4Buy resistant varieties
Choose cucumber, squash, bean and tomato varieties listed as resistant to the mosaic viruses. This is the only reliable protection.
mosaic virus resistant cucumber seed5Reflective mulch at planting
Silver reflective mulch laid down at planting confuses incoming aphids and delays infection.
silver reflective mulch garden6Skip the insecticide
Sprays do not kill aphids fast enough to stop virus transmission and can make them move around more.
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Which plants get mosaic virus
Every plant we cover that gets mosaic virus, grouped by type — tap any one to open its page. A note beside a plant came from that plant’s own entry, because the same disease can be a minor nuisance on one plant and a serious problem on another. Plenty of plants we do not cover get it too.
shrub1
annuals11
Plant families hit hardest
Related plants often share the same problems, so if one plant in a family has it, check the others. The largest group here is Solanaceae, with 4 of the 13 affected plants.
- Solanaceae4 plants
- Cucurbitaceae3 plants
- Amaranthaceae2 plants
When to treat
Pull the plant as soon as you are confident of the diagnosis, because aphids will carry it from that plant into the rest of the bed.
Timing only — the label is the law
This page tells you when to watch for mosaic virus and when treating is worth considering. It is not a recommendation to apply any particular product. Read and follow the product label before you spray — under federal law the label is the legal instruction, and using a pesticide against it is illegal.
- Check the pre-harvest interval. Every product that’s cleared for an edible crop sets a minimum number of days between spraying and picking. Find it on the label before you spray anything you intend to eat.
- Check the re-entry interval before you or anyone else works in the treated area again, and use the protective equipment the label names.
- Confirm the product is registered for your crop in your state. This page groups many different crops together, and a product legal on one of them is not legal on all of them — state registrations differ too. Your state pesticide agency or local extension office can confirm both.
- Rates and mixing instructions come from the label, never from us. We don’t publish them because they differ by product and formulation.
Other problems on the same plants
If a plant gets mosaic virus, these are the problems it most often gets as well, so they are worth checking for while you are out there. They tend to appear together; one does not cause another.