Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Hempel
We have been breeding in southern Baja where whiteflies inject TYLC into most every plant. The first year there we found that about 2/3 of our tomatoes were very susceptible to this disease.
Since then we have been strongly selecting for resistance. In resistant plants you can see infection in upper leaves has stopped right at the sight of infection (it does not quickly move through the plant from cell to cell.
We have also found that plants selected for TYLC resistance also seem to resist other viruses as well.
Give our experience, finding varieties with any viral resistance may help, and you can expect a significant minority of varieties without advertised resistance will have it as well. You might have just got unlucky in your selection this year, but I would definitely save seed from that Pink Berkeley Tie Dye. Because I would bet that it has been infected, but it was able to resist spreading. Look on the upper leaves. If you see little yellow dots it will indicate infection sites where the virus did not spread.
Disclaimer RE seed saving: The seed we have collected resistant plants does not seem to be infected. But infected seeds from resistant plants have been reported. I would definitely use bleach or TSP during seed processing to reduce this possibility. |
I went out and checked my all my remaining plants which is over 60 still in the garden and found that even the ones I wasn't sure were infected are. There are no varieties that are not showing the effects of the disease but some are showing far less extreme signs of it than others. There are probably around 25 or more different varieties out in the garden now. Since they all have it I am just going to leave the ones with tomatoes and see if I can get some more decent eating fruits off them before the real cold weather gets here. I have noticed that a lot of the fruit I have eaten lately does have that kind of uneven ripening and sometimes that kinda solid type center that Marsha mentioned but they still taste way better than the ones in the store.
The whiteflies are definitely thinning out and the only thing it could be is the extreme windy and cooler weather since I gave up spraying them a week ago because it was just so hopeless. It is so windy that the carrots, mustard and turnips I planted late yesterday afternoon and watered thoroughly just before dark were in need of water again by eight this morning. If this wind keeps blowing like this I will have to water several times a day to get a good stand. I have learned that keeping the soil surface moist makes a big difference in germination of small seeds.
The wind is so bad that all the leaf footed bugs were clustered this morning in bunches to stay out of the wind so I blasted three different clusters all at different stages of development from young juveniles to full grown adults. Wow that was an easy way to kill a lot of pests and use just a few sprays from a hand spray bottle with Permethrin and Dawn. I will keep checking the different plants for more leaf footed bugs and stink bugs the next few days because the fewer here when winter comes the fewer I'll have to deal with next year. I hope.
Bill