Each year, the Western Michigan Greenhouse Association and Metro Detroit Flower Growers Association partially fund floriculture projects performed by Michigan State University faculty and staff. In 2016, the associations awarded grants for seven projects in the MSU Departments of Horticulture, Entomology and Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences. Here is a short summary of three of those research projects and results.
Assessment and mitigation of tomato spotted wilt virus on chrysanthemums
Tomato spotted wilt virus is vectored by western flower thrips to a wide variety of plants, and infection of chrysanthemum is increasingly problematic. Symptomatic chrysanthemum plants at two commercial greenhouses were scouted and sampled to better understand the interaction between thrips populations, incoming plant material, carryover between crops and other risk factors for tomato spotted wilt virus. Ten percent of 110 samples tested for tomato spotted wilt virus were found to be positive for the plant virus, and it was most prevalent during the last week of July and first week of August. Based partly on this project, we recommend growers minimize plant stress, manage thrips populations less than or equal to 30 thrips per card per week), scout for early detection, perform consistent in-greenhouse viral testing, and immediately dispose of plants testing positive for tomato spotted wilt virus.
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