imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Tomato yellow leaf curl virus

I had tomato yellow leaf curl virus in my tomatoes a couple of years ago, so I pulled them out and did not plant the containers with tomatoes again. This year, I planted brandy boy, and the symptoms started to reappear on the new leaves. The disease is transmitted by whiteflies but that generation of whiteflies should be long gone by now. It is also transmitted by contaminated seed, which is how I got it from seeds I purchased.

I have since pulled the Brandy Boy, and the other Brandy Boy seedlings are not showing signs of the disease.

I have not found information on the virus persisting in the soil or the pot. I am probably going to have to get rid of the pot, and I don't know what I will do with the soil. I don't know if I can use it for fill or if I have to throw that away as well.

Anybody know anything about TYLCV and how long it persists?

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Lindsaylew82
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Old post I realize, but I started looking at studies, because I thought certainly it’s gotta be something in the soil or the pot. I read three long studies all indicating that it just can’t be spread mechanically.

So then I went to the vector life cycle, and they can’t tolerate freezing temps, and don’t have a dormancy period...... Not much help, but your climate doesn’t provide killing freezes, so you may just have the perfect climate that is capable of keeping them numerous.
Parasitology and microbiology were gross classes. But the take-away concerning vector-born pathogens is that you gotta control the vector. Netting sounds expensive and cumbersome. Large freezer space sounds impractical, but maybe worth a try, if your pot is small enough. Everything I’ve read says the entirety of the life cycle is on the plant. It makes sense that the virus is just present in many generations of the flies, and common in most of the vectors at any given point. Lots of vector that get a free pass from freezing to death sounds like a great place for symbiosis and rampant infection.

What was the outcome? What are your thoughts?

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

TYLV showed up on my tomatoes about 2011 after I saw the virus on a Momotaro which I grew from seed. I had never seen it before and I suspect it was transmitted by infected seed. White flies are a constant problem in the tropics with no off season for bugs and a year round growing season. Controlling white flies is nearly impossible compounded by the fact that white flies are also highly resistant to pesticides.

Most diseases related to white flies can be controlled by allowing the infected generation to pass. However TYLCV apparently has many unsymptomatic hosts including tomato relatives like peppers, and eggplant, even beans. White flies are ubiquitous and many plants host them so the reservoir for the virus is huge.

I tried not growing any tomatoes at all for 3 years hoping to let the disease die out, but tomatoes I planted after that never reached maturity before showing symptoms again. I can no longer grow any tomatoes without total exclusion that are not resistant. The disease first appeared on Maui in 2009 and no one knows where it came from. I am assuming it probably came from contaminated seeds as well. Now, the disease is so widespread that it is showing up in plants in garden centers and backyards all over the place. 2019 was a peak white fly year as it was a warm winter and the white fly populations were high even in the cooler months.

I did try champion II, which at the time was the only known TYLCV resistant cultivar. It did not pass my minimal taste standards.

I finally was able to get seeds of Charger and Camaro after a couple of years of seed drought. Charger is a medium sized determinate tomato. The fruit is about 6-8 oz. It is meaty but it had a tough white core. It was a summer of record heat so it probably was not totally the fault of the tomato. The taste was o.k., market tomato, low acid. The bonus was the extreme resistance to downy and powdery mildew even in wet and humid condiitions. It is definitely a keeper for me. I did not expect a determinate tomato to last so long, but it did continue to fruit for 6 months. I stopped fertilizing it at 4 months because I did not expect it to last that long. Only at the very end when the plant was old, did it show any signs of disease.

I also had a volunteer, red currant tomato,growing in my rose pot. It got no special attention and not only produced the sweetest fruit. It is also resistant to fungal disease and TYLCV. I have another one flowering and beginning to fruit in one of my tomato pots now even though it is the rainy season and it rains for days every couple of weeks or so.

There are a few more TYLCV cultivars available now. All of them are determinate tomatoes. I prefer indeterminate, but I have to take what I can get. Maybe I will be lucky and find some more naturally resistant varieties like red currant.

I do miss some of the varieties I really liked, but it will be difficult to keep them excluded.

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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

It has been 35 years sense I had yellow leaf problems with tomatoes. I learned my problem was low nitrogen. I lived in town garden soil was bad and I spent several years adding organic material, sand, wood ash, but no nitrogen. There was no internet then Harold at Farmers Co-op told me to add nitrogen and that solved the yellow leave problem. One year tomatoes were looking good until I mulched soil with free fresh cut saw dust from local saw mill plants turned yellow in 1 week then soon as I removed the saw dust and gave plants nitrogen plus water tomato plants came back to life with green leaves. I also learned tomato plants turn yellow if I add to much peat moss or potting soil to the tomato plant soil or large pots with all potting soil. Give your plants nitrogen just to rule out low nitrogen is the problem or is it some other problem. Too much nitrogen will cause very green curly tomato plant leaves. Too much nitrogen also causes very large tomato plants with few tomatoes. Low potassium causes few blossoms and few tomatoes.



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