Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus (w/ Pix)

[b54red]

I pulled about 10 more today and still have a few more that are showing signs that will get worse over the next week or two. I have never had any soil issues with TSWV. In other words it doesn't spread in the soil as far as I can tell because I have planted hundreds of new plants right behind plants pulled for TSWV and have not had a problem. If it spread through the soil like fusarium a new young plant wouldn't last a week before getting TSWV. Some of the plants I pulled today have some resistance but not like some of the hybrids that have that tolerance bred into them.

A fair number of infected plants took a long time to get really sick after showing the first symptoms which are slow growth, curly smaller leaves in the new growth which is off color and rust in the leaves on most of the suspect plants. It seems fruit setting will bring out the worse symptoms of a plant that has already been infected but hasn't gotten really sick yet. Younger plants usually get much sicker much faster than a large robust plant infected at the same time. If the larger plant has decent sized fruit on it they will usually make while most of the smaller ones become stunted and a bit weird looking.

I really don't want to grow any of the hybrids that are resistant to TSWV again. I grew a lot of them some years back and they just don't have the taste I am looking for besides we have a lot of commercial tomato growers around growing the hybrids that do well here and plenty of stands to get them from.

It seems I am finally having to pay the piper for all the success I have had for the past decade with grafted plants. Especially since I found that RST-04-106-T rootstock that is triple fusarium tolerant as well as tolerant of Bacterial wilt. Since using it I have not had any mass die offs other that the usual loses from TSWV and a few bad spider mite problems late in the summer. I just got used to losing a reasonable percentage of plants to TSWV and didn't expect this slaughter. Other than the replacement plants that I put in I don't think many of the original plants I set out in that bed of 45 will be long term survivors. I think I had two waves of thrips hit about a week apart and now it is just a waiting game to see which ones escaped getting stung. I do have a few that are definitely not infected that are standing two feet taller and fruiting with beautiful foliage and robust growth habits but not enough plants for that 44ft long bed.

Bill