© 2024 South Carolina Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Fighting Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus

Making It Grow! Minute logo

  Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The western flower thrips is the most important insect that serves as a vector of tomato spotted wilt virus for us in South Carolina. Thrips are not strong flyers but they are easily moved by wind currents and the range of the western flower thrips has been expanded as it travels from state to state on infested plants in the nursery trade. Thrips preferentially feed in terminal buds or inside flowers, places where it is hard for insecticide to reach them; so spraying your tomatoes will not give you much protection. Only the larval stage of the thrip, which develops inside the plant tissues, can be infected with the virus, and pesticides won’t travel inside the plant. Planting tomatoes on silver, reflective plastic mulch may give some control as it confuses the thrips and makes them fly upside down, they don’t see the tomatoes below.   

Stay Connected
Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.