Tomato Disorders

If you are going to start the occupation of growing tomatoes in your vegetable garden, you must know the fatal disease: late blight of tomato. Causal agent of the late blight is Phytophthora infestans. The pathogen is a fungal organism that affects tomato, potato and egg plant. Late blight occurs in pandemic form in potato and tomato if weather favors the growth and multiplication of the pathogen.

The pathogen affects foliage as well as fruits. Even if there is a visible dot of infection in each matured tomato fruits, the infection spreads throughout the whole fruit during the ripening and damages the whole fruit. The ripening is either in the standing plants or is in storage, the infection spread throughout the fruit and damage the whole tomato fruits. For growing tomatoes successfully, the gardeners must check the tomato plants everyday and carefully for the first incidence of the disease.

The gardeners who are growing tomatoes must know the symptoms of late blight of tomato which will be very helpful to control the disease spread at the very beginning of the disease incidence in the field. The disease symptom is very identifiable. The damage leaf section becomes like leaves started burning. Such burning is seen in the tomato shoots too. Once the gardeners see any symptom of the late blight damage in the foliage at any corner of your vegetable garden, they are strongly advised to start spraying systemic fungicide immediately. If the timely fungicide is not sprayed, the disease spreads so quickly that all the plants die and farmers will be in great loss.

In almost all the countries or regions where climate is the tropical, subtropical and temperate; the disease of late blight occurs in the crop of the tomato. Frequent rain or dew fall and cool to moderate temperature from 13 to 200C favors the spread of late blight in the crop of tomato. Hot and dry weather do not favor the spread of the late blight.

For growing tomatoes, some efforts can be done to control the spread of late blight in tomato plants. Growing tomatoes is recommended in the field where the crop of tomato or potato or egg plant or any other solanaceous crop was not grown last year. For growing tomatoes, it is advised to avoid use of the tomato seeds extracted from late blight affected tomato fruits for growing tomatoes.

It is also important to know that tomato seeds produced by reputed vegetable seed producing companies prepare tomato seeds with the treatment of acid, fermentation and again treatment with fungicide. These treatments destroy the pathogen of the late blight. So, growing tomatoes with the treated tomato seeds are safer. It is also advised not to irrigate the tomato crop excessively if the weather is favorable for the disease development.

For growing tomatoes successfully, it is also advised to avoid the excessive application of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers such as urea, ammonium sulfate or potassium nitrate in the tomato plants if the weather is conducive for the late blight pathogen multiplication. If the weather is favorable and very small symptom appeared in the tomato crop, apply fungicides immediately. There are protectants and broad spectrum fungicides available in the local market. Their trademark name differs in different countries. These chemicals are necessary to spray to the foliage of the tomato plants to check the spread of the late blight.

For growing tomatoes successfully, select the fungicides contacting the local agricultural extension worker in your locality. Some disease tolerant tomato varieties are also available for your region. So contact them to know the information about the appropriate late blight resistant or tolerant cultivars for growing tomatoes successfully.

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