Onion And Garlic Mosaic

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

The onion and garlic mosaic hits the garlic onion. Mainly from the disease, their inflorescences and leaves suffer. As a result of a rather severe defeat, these crops begin to stagnate in growth, die incredibly quickly and may even die. Onion inflorescences become small, and seed yield is significantly reduced. Such an unpleasant viral disease can manifest itself on onions and garlic of any age. A decrease in the assimilation process in infected plants often leads to a yield shortfall of 15 - 20%

A few words about the disease

The leaves of onion and garlic, struck by the mosaic, become, as it were, corrugated and slightly flattened as the disease develops. At first, you can notice the appearance of light green or yellow-white specks and stripes on them, and a little later, rather distinct yellow stripes begin to form on the leaves. Gradually, the leaves wither, quickly lie down and dry out.

On the testes, the inflorescences are quite decently deformed: instead of flowers, bulbs are often formed on them, and instead of pistils with stamens, elongated leaves are formed. Moreover, the corollas are almost always spliced, and the pedicels are of the same length. On curved peduncles, bright mosaic stripes are clearly visible. This viral disease leads to the loss of more than half of the seeds, while the rest of the seeds are of very low quality. And the germination capacity of such seeds drops noticeably.

Early onion and garlic plantings are less prone to mosaic damage. This attack is usually found after the planting of the set and the uterus onion. Crops infected with mosaic vegetate much longer, which slows down their ripening. And the bulbs of plants attacked by the disease are often very elongated and germinate without having time to reach maturity.

The cause of the onion and garlic mosaic is a destructive virus, spread with lightning speed by numerous sucking insects (which include aphids) and voracious herbivorous mites. Sometimes the virus is also carried by soil-dwelling nematodes. And its spread is also noted with the sap of infected vegetation.

The harmful mosaic virus persists in the bulbs of perennial and annual onion varieties. As a rule, it does not persist in seeds and soil.

How to fight

Seeds for planting onions and garlic should be taken exclusively from healthy crops. It is equally important to follow the rules of crop rotation when growing these crops. Earlier than after three to four years, it is not recommended to return the onions and garlic to their original place. When growing onions, it is important to strictly observe the spatial isolation of the growing testes of the first year of cultivation from the testes of the second year. Planting black onions should also be isolated from other types of onions.

All infected plants showing mosaic symptoms should be removed as soon as they are detected. Weed control should also cover the aisles. It also does not hurt to fight aphids - as a rule, various insecticides are sprayed against aphids.

From folk remedies for the prevention of onion mosaic, an ash solution is prepared, for the preparation of which a glass of ash is poured with a bucket of hot water, then this solution is infused throughout the day, then it is filtered and 40 g of laundry soap is added to it. Tobacco infusion is also a good remedy.

After harvesting, garlic with onions should be dried for ten hours at a temperature of 40 - 42 degrees. Such a measure will significantly reduce their infection with a dangerous virus, because often the bulbs obtained from infected plants can rot right in storage. And before laying the set for storage, it is advised to sprinkle it with dry chalk - for each kilogram of onion, you will need 20 g of chalk. It is equally important to ensure that there are no sharp fluctuations in humidity and temperature when storing onions and garlic.