The Tunisian Journal of Plant Protection brought about the link between PMMoV to ToMV from a French study dating back to 1964.

ToMV affects a wide range of Solanaceous crops and a strain of this virus likely mutated into PMMoV.

The pathogen is known to occur throughout the world and it frequently results in significant crop losses or reductions in both field and greenhouse plantings.

Symptoms usually include various degrees of mottling, chlorosis, curling, dwarfing, and distortion of the fruit, leaves, and even whole plants.

The symptoms on fruit include: a reduction in size, mottling and color changes, and an obvious distorted and lumpy appearance.

The virus is in vitro, which in this case means it can survive in an isolated environment, and being highly infectious it can easily be transmitted during normal crop maintenance.

PMMoV is exceptionally stable and it is known to survive for extended periods of time in plant debris and on greenhouse structures, pots, and horticultural tools.

[9] Soils with low organic matter content, specifically humus will much more readily promote the adsorption of PMMoV.

[5] Controlling the virus is important for pepper production worldwide, but recent research shows that this plant disease may be transmitted to humans.

An early study set in the United States and Singapore detected PMMoV in fecal samples from most participants, at concentrations up to 109 copies per gram of dry feces[16] and is consistently found in wastewater from around the world at concentrations greater than 1 million copies per milliliter of raw sewage.

PMMoV is commonly found in surface waters impacted by anthropogenic activity (namely wastewater), such as in groundwater, streams, lakes, rivers, esturaries and some oceans.

PMMoV is found in drinking water, including at trace levels in countries such as the USA,[18] Japan[19] and Sweden.