Tomato plants are especially vulnerable to foliar diseases that can kill them or impact yield. These problems require a number of pesticides in conventional crops and make organic production especially difficult. A Purdue University-led team of scientists has evidence that tomatoes may be more sensitive to these types of diseases because they’ve lost the protection offered by certain soil microbes. The researchers found that wild relatives and wild-type tomatoes that associate more strongly with a positive soil fungus grew larger, resisted disease onset and fought disease much better than modern plants.
January 15, 2021