Hello fellow forum members.
I am curious what your advise would be regarding Raspberry plants that show virus symptoms.
All the plants showing symptoms started showing them shortly after flowering. So i strongly suspect a pollen spread virus like RBDV.
Multiple different raspberry varieties are now showing virus symptoms . Multiple people close by also have raspberry’s showing signs. Some are willing to remove infected plants but not all.
Some canes with fruits had almost all the leaves turn yellow to white. I removed those (including roots). But new growth/canes are now also showing signs.
Would you remove all plants? Or keep them and risk spreading the disease further? (although all plants if seen are all infected. With the one exception being a few of my own plants that i winter pruned to the ground. And thus did not flower early spring, and seem to have escaped the “infection wave”
I’m contemplating my options.
Do i keep plants that only show small signs. (been a wet spring, i might confuse some other things with virus symptoms)
Or do i pre-emptively remove everything and go on the hunt for resistant varieties? (like Willamette)
source: FruitDisease - VirusResearch, Raspberry bushy dwarf virus
So far the fruits from the canes showing minors virus symptoms seemed fine. But those are from the initial flowering which i suspected was the infection moment. The newly formed fruits from later flowering seem a little small. But are not ripe yet. So it is hard to judge.
Pictures of my plants below
even a blackberry that was next to the infected raspberry’s is showing signs. The signs emanate from the young fruits. Further down the cane there are no signs.
Am i over-reacting? Or should i start culling plants?