My favorite part of the arrival of spring is getting back to the garden – especially tomatoes. But I've learned not to plant too soon, especially in my neck of the woods where snow can come as late as May.
Starting seedlings indoors is fine, but you can't cheat by buying a plant already festooned with fruits, which I unfortunately smugly did last year. One-by-one, the beautiful tomatoes turned red and quickly rotted from the bottom up into brown mush.
So I was intrigued by a study just published from professor Sota Koeda and graduate student Moeno Shimoide at the Graduate School of Agriculture at Kindai University in Japan, in the journal Euphytica. They tackled begomoviruses, a large group of pathogens known to decimate crops of beans, squash, cassava, cotton and tomatoes, causing tomato leaf curl disease. Whiteflies transmit it in the southern US as far north as North Carolina, and in the Caribbean, Mexico, Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Mediterranean.
Infected plants are stunted and festooned with upward curling, yellowing young small leaflets, and halted flowering.
To continue reading, go to DNA Science at PLoS, where this post first appeared.