How to Manage Pests

UC Pest Management Guidelines

SYMPTOMS

Plants with curly top are stunted because growth ceases. Plants turn yellow to bronze in color with purple-tinged leaves. Plants become stiff and soon die. Green fruit turns red, regardless of age.

COMMENTS ON THE DISEASE

Beet curly top virus is only spread from plant-to-plant by the beet leafhopper, Circulifer tenellus. The virus and the beet leafhopper have very wide host ranges. Once acquired by the leafhopper, beet curly top virus is carried for the rest of the leafhopper's life, and thus long distance spread is common. Infected plants are often widely scattered in a field; field margins are especially vulnerable because leafhoppers like to feed on plants that border bare soil areas. Beet curly top virus is limited to the phloem, the food-conducting tissues of the plant, and the leafhopper must feed on the phloem in order to acquire and/or inoculate the virus to plants. Leafhoppers overwinter in the foothills west of the Central Valley, migrating down into the Valley in late spring. Occurrence of the curly top disease is spreading; in some years it has caused almost complete crop loss in individual fields near the foothills.

MANAGEMENT

Dense stands of tomatoes apparently discourages visitation by leafhoppers. There is no genetic resistance in tomatoes to beet curly top virus. A statewide control program designed to control the beet leafhopper is practiced annually by spraying foothill areas where leafhoppers are congregated.

PUBLICATION

UC IPM Pest Management Guidelines: Tomato
UC ANR Publication 3470
Diseases
R. M. Davis, Plant Pathology, UC Davis
G. Miyao, UC Cooperative Extension, Solano/Yolo counties
K. Subbarao, USDA Agricultural Research Station, Salinas
J. J. Stapleton, UC IPM Program, Kearney Agricultural Center, Parlier
Acknowledgments for contributions to the disease section:
B. W. Falk, Plant Pathology, UC Davis