It could be the first case in France: the emerging virus ToBRFV, harmless to humans, would have contaminated tomatoes in a greenhouse on a Breton farm, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.
“The services of DRAAF Brittany carried out an inspection on February 11 following a self-check (analyzes for virus search) carried out after identification, on tomatoes, of lesions compatible with this disease”, writes the ministry in a press release.
The final results should be communicated Monday by the national reference laboratory. In the meantime, the operation has been placed in complete receivership with, in particular, the confinement of its two greenhouses and the access ban.
An investigation is underway to identify possible sources of contamination as well as other operations that could have been linked to the one in question. If there is an “official conformation of the outbreak,” all of the tomato plants in the contaminated greenhouses will be destroyed, the ministry said.
A highly transmissible virus
In early February, ANSES warned against “the tomato brown rugose fruit virus” (ToBRFV), a new virus “particularly dangerous for plants which are sensitive to it”. It can be transmitted through infected seeds, plants and fruit and survives in the open air for a long time.
According to ANSES, the virus can infect up to 100% of plants on a production site, which makes it formidable for crops with high planting density such as greenhouse crops. However, it has no impact on humans.
This virus was first observed in Israel in 2014, then it was found in 2018 on tomato crops in Mexico, the United States, Germany and Italy and finally in 2019 in the Netherlands, in the United Kingdom. – United Kingdom and Greece.
