My entry in the "Name That Disease" game.

[Indyartist]

Many, many of my plants are suffering from this virus or whatever it is deemed to be. First the tomato skin becomes transparent then this area becomes soft. Any ideas for identification and possibly treatment. If I understand what it is I might try to ward it off early next year. This problem has ruined my tomatoes in the later part of the year since I put in this garden.

[Gobig_or_Gohome_toms]

Were the fruits exposed to the sun? Could it be sunscald??

Craig

[Indyartist]

I think it is something else. My poor garden has examples of every malady known to gardening, including sun scald. This is something that makes the skin transparent, then soft , then every manner of rot, wrinkles and insects follow. I've had sun scald that turned an area white but this is a clear or transparency, then softness, then rotting, wrinkling muck.

[nctomatoman]

I've had that happen to fruit on plants that died - I think one plant went down to bacterial wilt and the fruit did that....but just a guess. Plant essentially wilted (stayed green, then brown) - then turned crisp - remaining fruit did what yours did.

[Talon1189]

Have you ever considered spraying with fungicides?? Your fruit looks like mine after a heavy frost in late October

[fortyonenorth]

Indy - six hours ago I didn't have a clue, but I found some tomatoes in the garden today that precisely match your description and pic. I second the motion for sun scald - albeit low level. The only fruit affected here were those exposed to the wicked weather we've had the last few days. Healthy plants otherwise.

[dice]

I do not see an exact match here, but this is a good place to look
for association of fruit symptoms with diseases/damage:
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...TomFrtKey.html
(Skip the index at the top and simply scroll down past it.)

Another site:
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/p...emsolver/ripe/

And:
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/IPM/engl...ers/index.html

(I could not find the old Penn State guide. I get a different page than
I used to and circular links following the "vegetable diseases" on that
page.)

There is also Botrytis, usually thought of as a fungal foliage disease,
but I have seen it on the tops of fruit in rainy weather
(water containing spores of it pooled up on them):
http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.corne...o_Botrytis.htm

[carolyn137]

If there are other parts of the plants that also have symptoms you might consider Buckeye Fruit and Root Rot.

If not then I'd consider one of the more common fungi and bacteria that cause what are called fruit rot ones b'c they usually affect only the fruits and are much more common when there's high humidity, lack of air circulation, etc.

Dice agave you some links, I prefer the Cornell and TAMU ones, and by clicking on the fruits in the cartoon diagonosis picture you should be able to get an idea of what the problem is.

Since these fruit rots are caused primarily by normal fungi and some bacteria already in the environment and not those normally associated with tomato disease per se, other than the rots, you can't change the weather that appears to induce them, so.........

[Indyartist]

Thanks everyone, the weather was extremely rainy for months and then sweltering heat so I think my poor garden and plants are a petri dish of destructive maladies.

[dice]

I do not get buckeye rot or those other common fruit rot diseases out
here, but we do get botrytis. In fact the first, largest tomato this year,
an Early Rouge, had it on one end, while it was still green. The fruit was
about half the size of a baseball, so about half way to ripe.

Interestingly, the plant foliage above the fruit showed no signs of it. (So
the foliage has better botrytis tolerance than the fruit in that cultivar.
Same with Gary'O Sena, where about half the fruit had it in 2008,
which was also a cold, rainy summer for the first half of it, but the foliage
had no symptoms.)