How scared were you when the news of the covid virus got to you?
What got you scared the most?
Was it the idea of getting a virus that could keep you locked away from the rest of the world for as long as you lived with the virus and a list of other diseases?
Was it also the idea of imminent death, slowly, painfully, and with all the symptoms shown in the media?
Did you fear that you were going to be separated from your loved ones at a time when you were finally experiencing true joy and family bond?
Whatever your fear was at the time, I can bet that you felt relieved when the lockdown was reduced a bit and humans could finally carry on businesses because the government had finally found a way to reduce the risk of transmission.
The same way you felt through the wake of the covid virus, is how plants feel every time there is an outbreak of garden diseases.
It is how those cabbages feel every time a large population of cabbages has to be wiped out by virus diseases.
Even worse is the fact that in the outbreak of these diseases on a plant population, the plants cannot, like human beings, change location or seek refuge by themselves.
They always have to depend on humans, gardeners, farmers, and houseplant lovers to come to their aid.
Sometimes, before humans can detect the considerable decline in plant health, great damage has already been done by the diseases to the plant population.
There are a lot of different diseases that affect cabbages, some of these diseases can be treated, while some others like the mosaic cannot be cured and would lead to the imminent death of a cabbage.
There’s relatively no one who hasn’t had cabbage at one time or the other in their lives. Either eaten with a blend of other vegetables in a salad, the cabbage, is an important nutrient supplier for healthy meals and healthy life.
This goes on to say that cabbage is an important Vegetable to humans both nutrition-wise and economic-wise. Hence, we must deal with diseases that try to cut short the useful life of cabbages, which will, in turn, reduce the amount of cabbage in circulation.
Cabbage is a leafy vegetable, a sister plant to broccoli and cauliflower. The structure of the cabbage is such that it looks like an onion. With many leaves arranged to spiral around the cabbage, the cabbage plant is a bunch of leafy goodness.
The cabbage weighs about 1kg and usually has a round shape. Cabbage grows out ahead stalk that is plucked after a year and eaten as food or left for the second year if there’s an intention to propagate the cabbage as a new plant.
The cabbage is usually not planted close to other plants because it is susceptible to pests and diseases.
Regarded as the curse of cabbage in the world, the cabbage mosaic virus is one of the many diseases that attack cabbage and cause poor yield for farmers and gardeners.
Mosaic affects a wide range of plants, is easily communicable from one cabbage to another, and does not have a cure.
Gardeners can only guard against the formation of these viruses on their cabbages. In the past three years, cabbage mosaic infestation has been the cause of a net agricultural loss of over three hundred thousand tonnes of cabbage.
In this article, you will be learning about the ways to keep the cabbage mosaic diseases at bay from your cabbages. Even though there is no known cure, I believe the best cure for a disease is by not letting it into your garden in the first place.
Symptoms of cabbage Mosaic Virus Diseases
There are visible symptoms that can be seen in a cabbage population that points to the fact that a mosaic virus is taking root in the cabbage.
These diseases belong to the family of virus disease, so it does not take time before they spread from the leaves of a single plant to the whole plant and every other plant in the garden.
If you want to ensure the good life of your plants, ensure to always lookout for symptoms of diseases in the plant. It does not have to be a cabbage.
It could be lettuce, a pomegranate, a rhododendron, anything at all that falls under the class of house plants.
Always keep an eye out for symptoms of diseases in plants and ensure to take steps to avert these symptoms before they lead to complete degeneration of the plants.
The following are symptoms of cabbage mosaic diseases:
- Formation of yellow rings
- Chlorosis
- Wrinkling of Leaves
- Stunted Growth
- Rapid loss of water
These symptoms develop slowly on the cabbage, from the leaves of the one cabbage plant to the stems and down to the roots of the cabbage.
From one cabbage plant to another and another, until every cabbage on the soil is infected with the virus diseases. The symptoms of these mosaic diseases on cabbage have been listed above. How they manifest, is explained below.
1. Formation of Yellow Leaves
The leaves of cabbages ought to have a light lemon or white color. When these leaves begin to turn a pale yellow even in the presence of consistent watering and a good soil texture, then your next guess should be the growth of diseases on the plant.
The odds are that your cabbage plant has contracted the mosaic virus.
2. Chlorosis
Chlorosis is the condition in plants caused by diseases, in which plants are not able to produce enough chlorophyll for photosynthesis.
Chlorophyll is the green pigment in plants that help them carry out the photosynthetic process of making food necessary for growth.
When cabbage plants develop mosaic virus diseases, they begin to slowly lose their chlorophyll pigments.
Remember the first symptom is a yellowing of leaves. Leaves that suddenly turn yellow are a sign of chlorosis and a loss of chlorophyll.
3. Wrinkling of Leaves
As the virus gets intense and the leaves of the cabbage plant can no longer carry out photosynthesis, they begin to wrinkle.
Even with adequate sunlight, a good water supply, and good potting soil.
Most times, diseases like mosaic do not appear very obviously on the skin of the plants. They are not like root rot that can be visibly seen, so you need to be very sensitive to the point in the growth of your cabbage plant when the leaves begin to wrinkle.
4. Stunted Growth
The cabbage plants stop growing and start to wilt.
There is no photosynthesis anymore, nutrients are not dispersed from one part of the plant to another and the plant can no longer survive the stress that comes with stress, all because of the mosaic group of diseases.
5. Rapid Loss of Water
The leaves lose water quickly and the plants begin to look wilted and drooping. Mosaic diseases take away the appeal of a cabbage plant.
How Can We Control Yellow Mosaic Virus
You do not want to tread the path of fungicides in your attempt to control mosaic diseases in cabbage. This is because fungicides do not have any effect on them.
Neem oil, isopropanol, and a host of other resource-effective herbicides do not have any effect on the mosaic virus. This is because the mosaic virus disease belongs to a family of virus diseases whose cure is not yet known.
The imminent consequence of a mosaic virus infection on a cabbage plantation is death. Hence, gardeners have to create systems to prevent the virus from getting into their cabbages or cabbage plantation.
This is in fact, the best way to handle the virus- by ensuring that the virus does not get access to the cabbage plantation.
The following are ways you can adopt to handle the mosaic virus:
- The Use of resistant varieties
- Destroy seeds of infected cabbage
- Adequate Sanitation
- Consistent Weed Removal
The above-listed steps are guidelines that can help keep your cabbage plants free from mosaic virus diseases and eventually prevent death or loss of yields.
1. The Use of Resistant Varieties.
In your selection of cabbage cultivars to plant in your plant pot, endeavor to select cultivars that are resistant to diseases, especially cultivars that are resistant to mosaic disease.
Ensure you try to know the history of the seeds you are purchasing from transplant in your garden, they might have gotten infected by the virus before fruiting and seed production, planting these seeds in your garden can lead to the outbreak of the virus diseases in your healthy garden.
2. Destroy Seeds of Infected Cabbage
As you already know, diseases are often transferred from one person to another through DNA.
This is the same for plants. The virus disease called mosaic can be deposited in the seed whose planting can cause an outbreak of the virus on your land. Hence, ensure to destroy the seeds of infected cabbage plants.
This is to hamper the reproductive processes of such diseased species.
3. Adequate Sanitation
Cabbage Mosaic diseases can also be transmitted from one plant to another from the tools used in caring for the plants like shears and the rest.
So it is recommended that you properly wash these tools after usage to remove any diseases that might have gotten stuck on the body.
4. Consistent Weed Removal
The mosaic virus thrives well in an area covered by weeds. Therefore I recommend you clear weeds that are close to the plant pot at least twice every month. You could clear manually or with the use of vinegar and herbicides.
Which Crop is Generally Affected by Mosaic Disease?
The crops that are generally and mostly affected by mosaic diseases are:
- Tobacco
- Cassava
- Beet
- Cucumber
- Alfafa
There is a list of others, but these rank as the plants, popularly affected by all the species of mosaic diseases.
Can Plants Recover From Viruses
Virus diseases that affect both plants and animals have a history of being incurable.
There is but a little breakthrough in science on how to eliminate viruses. This is because a virus does not become active except it gets into the body of a living host.
Outside a host, viruses are inactive and exist as crystals.
So, viruses cannot be treated and plants cannot recover from viruses.
Conclusion
Prevention, they say, is better than cure. This is exactly the case of virus diseases and plants.
In The case of the mosaic virus and cabbage plants, the best way to deal with the mosaic Virus on cabbage plants is to guard against the disease infestation.
If they eventually get into your cabbage plantation, you can quarantine the garden to prevent it from spreading.
Also, ensure to destroy seeds of infected cabbage.
Virus diseases have no positive benefits on your cabbage plants and do not deserve a place in your cabbage plantation.
