There have been several posts lately on Ask a Question forum and a couple other places on the site with photos of plants that look like they may be infected with Dasheen Mosaic Virus.
This is a little bit of info about DsMV. I am NOT an expert. But because I have a very extensive collection of aroids, some rare species and some over 20 years old, I made it my business to educate myself about it. If you collect aroids, you should too.
Dasheen is another name for taro, and specifically refers to Colocasia escuelenta, which has been a cultivated food crop worldwide for many centuries. Colocasia escuelenta in its basic form is the plain green elephant ear, but also now includes ornamental varieties like Black Coral, Elepaio, Black Marble, Lemon Lime and a hundred others that are grown and collected as ornamentals.
DsMV, however, does NOT just affect C. escuelenta. It can also infect most other ornamental aroids like Philodendrons, Alocasia, Xanthosoma...some genuses of Aroids are more resistant to the virus but it is thought that any aroid can be affected.
It is spread by a variety of aphid species which infest a wide variety of cultivated aroids all over the world. It is endemic to virtually all commercially planted tropical root crops of taro. There are other forms of Mosaic Virus that affect many other types of plants. The DsMV virus was first reported in India.
Plants that are infected and then vegetatively propagated will spread the infection because the virus infects all of the plant's tissue. So if you share an infected plant with a friend, you have spread the disease.
The virus is most commonly seen in cultivated aroids as a lighter green 'feathering' pattern that appears between the veins on the leaf. There can also be banding on the veins, or the plant can have deformed curled twisted leaves, or there may be no apparent visual symptoms. The symptoms can be intermittent, or seasonal if your climate allows for intermittent dormancy.
There is no cure for DsMV. It can't be treated with fungicide. While commercial taro cops are never treated (because it is impossible to control the aphids in that setting), ornamental plants that enter the plant trade and that are sold as houseplants should be destroyed if found to be infected because they can spread the virus very quickly through insect vector, through vegetative propagation and trading or selling infested plant material, etc.
If you think you have a plant that exhibits the symptoms of DsMV, you should isolate that plant from the rest of your collection and take it to your local Agricultural Extension office and have them inspect it for you.
DsMV is becoming more and more common in plants that the aroid community is buying because of the explosion of importing of plants from Thailand, Indonesia, Borneo and other places by people here in the US who want to cash in on the huge prices many aroids are bringing at market now. While the plants are supposed to be inspected before they leave their country of origin and again when they come into the US, often they are passed through in their country of origin without Phytosanitary documentation or with misleading documentation. And the USDA does not pick up on every import the way they used to because the law was changed at some point to allow the everyday ordinary citizen to import as many as 12 plants to a shipment without an Import License.
Don't put you collection AT RISK. Google images of DsMV infected plants and acquaint yourself with the symptoms. It can spread through a collection quickly and ruin your beloved plants.
I myself found DsMV in a Colocasia illustrious 'Imperial Taro' in my yard several years ago and pulled it out and burned it.
