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Crop disease threatens southwest Florida tomatoes

A ProMED-mail post
ProMED-mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases

February 8, 2006
From: ProMED-mail<promed@promedmail.org>
Source: MSNBC NBC2 News, WBBH-TV-Ft. Myers, FL [edited] <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10841254/>

Crop disease threatens southwest Florida tomatoes

A highly contagious disease has been found on a crop of tomato plants in Immokalee. Late blight is not harmful to humans but could destroy tomato crops in just days.

An alert was sent out to all Southwest Florida farmers to take precautions, because the disease spreads easily and quickly.

"This goes very quickly. I've seen fields lost in a matter of a week," said plant pathologist Dr. Pam Roberts. "It can take out any part of the plant, especially the fruit."

Plants go from healthy green to blackened and shriveled and then rot.
Under a microscope, it's a lemon-shaped fungus. On a leaf, it's brownish spots that grow into a white, fuzzy mold.

"It can reproduce very quickly. It can spread to new plants and basically kill a plant in a matter of days," Roberts said. A farmer's only defense is fungicide.

At Oakes Farmers Market in Naples, they're already feeling a Wilma-induced tomato shortage. If late blight spreads, researchers believe our only options will be international. "We're going to be going to other sources, like Mexico and Honduras," said Lee Snyder of Oakes Farmers Market.

With a tomato shortage, growers have to raise their prices to retail outlets, which, in turn, raise prices for the consumer. That's why Roberts is working to save crops. She, along with a team of University of Florida researchers, is testing different fungicides to see which one stops late blight before it has time to spread. "This thing can spread for miles; everybody is at risk," Roberts said.

Unlike citrus canker, an infected tomato plant doesn't have to be destroyed if farmers can kill and contain the late blight. The disease is seasonal, normally kicking in mid-winter, when the weather is slightly cool and humid, like it is now.

--
ProMED-mail
<promed@promedmail.org>

[Late blight, caused by _Phytophthora infestans_, can be a serious disease of tomato (and more commonly potato) when the weather is consistently cool and rainy. Late blight has resulted in numerous epidemics of tomatoes throughout North America. Tremendous yield reductions result in seasons when late blight epidemics occur. Production areas that have experienced the most severe epidemics in recent years include the Del Fuere Valley in Mexico; the mountain regions of North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Alabama; and in certain coastal regions of California late in the production season. Within the entire United States production area, late blight ranks as the 8th most important tomato disease. However, whenever late blight appears in production areas, it has the potential to result in tremendous losses if environmental conditions
are favorable for disease spread. Breeding new varieties for resistance, including the use of genetic engineering, is an active area of research for control of this disease, which is managed with sanitation and fungicides.

Links:
<http://www.floridafarmers.org/news/articles/CropdiseasethreatensSWFLtomatoes0106.htm>
<http://www.apsnet.org/online/lateblite/papers/lb003.htm>
<http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1365-313X.2003.01934.x/abs/>
- Mod.JAD]

[see also in the
archive:
2004
----
Phytophthora sp., root and foot rot, tomato - Belgium 20040123.0266]

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