Late Blight definitely here - tomato prices will jump
I had posted about outbreaks of Late Blight here back on
July 11th. Late Blight is what caused the Irish Potato Famine and it also affects other crops like tomatoes.
Well, it is more serious than initially reported. From the
New York Times:
Outbreak of Fungus Threatens Tomato Crop
A highly contagious fungus that destroys tomato plants has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined, according to federal and state agriculture officials.
The spores of the fungus, called late blight, are often present in the soil, and small outbreaks are not uncommon in August and September. But the cool, wet weather in June and the aggressively infectious nature of the pathogen have combined to produce what Martin A. Draper, a senior plant pathologist at the United States Department of Agriculture, described as an “explosive” rate of infection.
William Fry, a professor of plant pathology at Cornell, said, “I’ve never seen this on such a wide scale.”
A strain of the fungus was responsible for the Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century. The current outbreak is believed to have spread from plants in garden stores to backyard gardens and commercial fields. If it continues, there could be widespread destruction of tomato crops, especially organic ones, and higher prices at the market.
“Locally grown tomatoes normally get $15 to $20 a box” at wholesale, said John Mishanec, a pest management specialist at Cornell who has been visiting farms and organizing emergency growers’ meetings across upstate New York. “Some growers are talking about $40 boxes already.” Tomatoes on almost every farm in New York’s fertile “Black Dirt” region in the lower Hudson Valley, he said, have been affected.
Professor Fry, who is genetically tracking the blight, said the outbreak spread in part from the hundreds of thousands of tomato plants bought by home gardeners at Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot and Kmart stores starting in April. The wholesale gardening company Bonnie Plants, based in Alabama, had supplied most of the seedlings and recalled all remaining plants starting on June 26. Dennis Thomas, Bonnie Plants’ general manager, said five of the recalled plants showed signs of late blight.
Ouch -- the weather (except for here) has been unseasonably cool and wet -- perfect conditions for a fungal infection. In my first post I noted that the box store nursery people were not trained to recognize an infected plant and that the Blight was able to spread because of gardeners who weren't expecting anything with that serious a repercussion...
Posted by DaveH at July 30, 2009 8:41 PM
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