ABSTRACT
Virus diseases of garlic may be controlled by the use of healthy planting material, from which the viruses have been eradicated by meristem tip culture. Certification schemes are required to ensure that the nucleus of mother stock plants are maintained under virus-free conditions and are indexed at regular intervals to ensure their freedom from infection. As the viruses so far identified in garlic are not known to be seed transmitted in other Allium species, it is unlikely that they would be seed transmitted in garlic either. Therefore, in the long-term viruses might be controlled in garlic by growing garlic crops from seed rather than from vegetatively propagated cloves. If these cultivars were not commercially acceptable to the grower in their present state, they could form nevertheless the basis of a breeding program to produce agronomically acceptable cultivars. Virus infection has been reported in a number of commercially less important Allium crop species and various Allium ornamental species.
