Epidemiological Insights Into Water and Soil‐Mediated Transmission of Tomato Mottle Mosaic Virus

ABSTRACT Tomato mottle mosaic virus (ToMMV) poses a growing threat to tomato and pepper crops, yet its epidemiology remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to investigate water‐ and soil‐mediated transmission of ToMMV under controlled conditions. The experiment involved mechanical inoculation of tomato plants, which demonstrated that infectious ToMMV particles remained viable in water up to 27 weeks at a 10 −2 dilution. In hydroponic systems, ToMMV present in the nutrient solution caused systemic infection in bait plants within 5–17 weeks, depending on the severity of root injury, while infection was not observed in plants with intact roots even after 38 weeks of exposure. The transmission of the pathogen via irrigation was also confirmed in an experiment where seedlings and seed‐derived plants grown in substrate (roots were not deliberately injured) were irrigated with ToMMV‐contaminated water, resulting in infection 6 and 10 weeks after the start of exposure, respectively. The soil‐mediated transmission process was further verified by planting healthy seedlings and seeds into previously contaminated substrate, resulting in infection within a period of 3–18 weeks. These findings emphasise the need for upgrading integrated management strategies, including water quality monitoring and reliable, rapid diagnostics, to mitigate the spread of ToMMV in greenhouse production systems. To support the development of effective monitoring strategies, the study also assessed the performance of two isothermal amplification assays for potential on‐site detection of ToMMV in water. A recombinase‐polymerase amplification (RPA) assay exhibited sensitivity comparable to that of reverse transcription‐quantitative PCR and reliably detected ToMMV in crude water samples without RNA extraction.