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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 28 2020, @12:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the I'd-like-a-BLT,-hold-the-bacteria dept.

Wild tomatoes resist devastating bacterial canker:

Many New York tomato growers are familiar with the scourge of bacterial canker—the wilted leaves and blistered fruit that can spoil an entire season's planting. For those whose livelihoods depend on tomatoes, this pathogen—Clavibacter michiganensis—is economically devastating.

In a new paper, Cornell researchers showed that wild tomato varieties are less affected by bacterial canker than traditionally cultivated varieties. The paper, "Characterizing Colonization Patterns of Clavibacter michiganensis During Infection of Tolerant Wild Solanum Species," published online in November in the journal Phytopathology.

[...] "Bacterial canker is pretty bad in New York," Peritore-Galve said, "but it's distributed worldwide, everywhere tomatoes are grown."

[...] The pathogen causes wounding and is spread by wind-blown rain; if one tomato gets infected, it can spread from plant to plant.

"Bacterial canker certainly can cause the complete loss of a field of tomatoes, and we see outbreaks of the disease every year," [professor Christine] Smart said. "Growers use disease management strategies, including spraying plants with copper-based products; however, once there is an outbreak it's difficult to control bacterial canker."

[...] Tomatoes are native to the Andes Mountains region of South America, where wild species have been free to evolve for thousands of years. Recently, plant breeders have identified wild tomatoes that seem to be less susceptible to bacterial canker and are resistant to other pathogens.

[...] Like individual veins in a human, xylem vessels transport water and nutrients from soil throughout the plant. The team found that in cultivated species, bacterial canker spreads everywhere, while in wild species the bacteria remain confined to certain xylem vessels without moving much into surrounding tissues.

"The wild tomatoes, for some reason, impede the ability of the bacteria to move up and down through the plants, which reduces symptoms—in this case, leaf wilt," Peritore-Galve said.

"Many times, it's not the fruit symptoms that cause the issue," [disease specialist Chuck] Bornt said, "it's the wilting of the plants or the plugging of the xylem cells that cause the plant to lose foliage, which then exposes the fruit to sun scald and other issues. ... [I]nfected fruit are also an issue, but in my opinion it's these other issues that have more impact."

Journal Reference:
F. Christopher Peritore-Galve et al, Characterizing Colonization Patterns of Clavibacter michiganensis During Infection of Tolerant Wild Solanum Species, Phytopathology (2019). DOI: 10.1094/PHYTO-09-19-0329-R


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by TrentDavey on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:31PM (3 children)

    by TrentDavey (1526) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:31PM (#950118)

    This highlights one my complaints against genetically modified organism use: if the monoculture develops a susceptibility to a disease, there are no diversely-growing strains that may not have developed the susceptibility and the entire crop is lost.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:00PM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:00PM (#950131) Journal

    Note, however, that this is not an argument about GMO organisms, but rather about inbred organisms, and applies just as much to domesticated strains that have not been genetically modified.

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    • (Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:52PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:52PM (#950174) Homepage
      Case in point, bananas.
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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:49AM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 29 2020, @12:49AM (#950352) Journal

    Key word seems to be "monoculture". Back when there were 100+ varieties of potatoes grown commonly, a blight might wipe out your crop, and leave your neighbor alone. Today, a blight could wipe out most of a nation's production for the season. Witness Ireland. Most of our commercial production of crops is like that. All the seed is supplied by a huge conglomerate, all from the same stock.

    Along with all the other potential threats to agriculture (like bee decline) we have chosen to make ourselves vulnerable with those monocultures.