Once a plant is infected, no chemical treatments can cure it of a virus. Thus, avoidance is a common management strategy, for instance, exclusion of thrips from vegetable transplant production areas to reduce infection by TSWV. TSWV is extremely difficult to manage because of the wide and overlapping host ranges for this virus and its vectors and its presence in perennial weeds and ornamentals. TSWV overwinters in a relatively few abundant winter annual weeds, and dispersal of infectious thrips from these sources to susceptible crops and weeds occurs over a brief period in the spring. Use of this information in concert with variety selection and crop planting date is being used to minimize infections. An integrated management approach has been successfully implemented in several crops and locations. Insecticides have been used to reduce thrips larval development and thus limit secondary virus spread. The use of UV reflective mulches, acibenzolar-S-methyl (Actigard), and insecticides has provided excellent management of TSWV in commercial tomato fields in southeastern U.S.
Resistant tomato and pepper cultivars with single dominant gene resistance are currently being used to reduce losses to TSWV. However, symptoms are frequently more evident on fruit (immature and ripening) than on foliage thus limiting the commercial usefulness of these cultivars. Transgenic resistance has been developed, generally with the nucleocapsid gene, and demonstrated. Unfortunately, resistance breaking isolates of TSWV have been identified that can overcome both conventional and transgenic resistance.