Strategies to address plant virus diseases need to include farmlevel training to increase farmers' awareness and knowledge about plant viruses, including disease identification, epidemiology and management. Being able to distinguish symptoms of virus infection from other diseases, and knowledge that most viruses are transmitted by insect vectors (mainly whiteflies, aphids or thrips) may encourage farmers to control insect populations and avoid the unnecessary use of fungicides and other pesticides ineffective against virus diseases. Yet, insect control must be practiced before
the symptoms of virus diseases have started appearing in the cropdwhich requires a massive leap in farmers' knowledge about the epidemiology of viruses. Careful monitoring of vector populations for disease control is not practiced currently; for instance,
no farmers in our sample used blue or yellow sticky traps, a simple
method commonly employed for vector population monitoring in
other counties, nor did input shops sell such traps.