mottled leaves, pull or not

[TZ-OH6]

At what point do you pull a plant when you suspect virus? One of my plants is showing signs of mottling on the leaves, but it is a one of a kind from Tom so I don't want to pull it if I don't have too.

[Medbury Gardens]

Can you post a photo of it???

[Tom Wagner]

Mottled leaves? Unfortunately, that is normally a sure sign of a virus, and I don't care if it is one of my clones....I would pull it and dispose of it.

To rogue or not to rogue....that is just part of a collector's job. Some varieties are super sensitive to a number of virus strains, be it X, Y, Leaf Roll, A or a mosaic of several strains.

One reason I grow so many potatoes from TPS is to escape the virus. Sadly, some promising lines will pick up a virus from somewhere...even from certified seed since the allowances for a virus will accept a lot of seed potatoes with say...1% infection rates.

One of my major selection venues is for good to excellent tolerance to most viral organisms even with some latent infection. That some potato clones show up a virus infection simply shows that one cannot always keep the favorite potatoes forever.

I plant virus free potatoes in isolated fields so that I may harvest a reasonable crop of potatoes that were not subject to the vectors of virus like the dreaded Peach Aphid~

Tom Wagner

[TZ-OH6]

Here is the pic. The mottling is just starting, but covers the whole plant. It seems to show up after cloudy weather, maybe because the virused tissue can't darken as well. I had a Red Pontiac certified seed potato that did this last year and I let it go to see what would happen and it got worse, which is why I took note. The red pontiac had rugose foliage along with the mottling though.