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Late Blight Threatens Tomatoes, Potatoes

June 26, 2009

Contact: Ned Porter, 207-287-7576

AUGUSTA—The Maine Department of Agriculture and University of Maine Cooperative Extension are encouraging home gardeners to check tomato and potato plants for symptoms of late blight, a highly destructive disease if left unmanaged.

“We are urging home gardeners, especially those who may have recently planted tomato seedlings from a big box store, to check for this disease,” said Jim Dwyer, University of Maine Potato Specialist. The symptoms include irregular-shaped, water-soaked, greasy gray spots surrounded by white mold, which eventually turn into blackened areas on the stems and leaves. These blackened areas dry up, wilt and die.

Dwyer also said, “Because the tomato fruits will be ruined by this fungus and the threat of late blight spreading to potatoes, home gardeners that find late blight on their plants should pull, bag and throw out these plants. They should not put them on the compost pile.”

Earlier this week, late blight was detected in potatoes in a commercial field and on tomatoes in a home garden in New York. The long stretch of cool, cloudy and rainy weather this June has provided classic conditions for the spores of this fungus to disperse. The disease was also discovered in tomato seedlings stocked in the garden centers of large retailers in Maine. The company that produced the seedlings, Bonnie Plants, a large supplier of vegetable, herb and flower transplants based in Alabama, has cooperated fully and pulled its stock from sale and arranged for its destruction.

For more information:

  • University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Pest Management Office, 800-287-0279

  • Cooperative Extension Office, Presque Isle, 800-287-1462

  • http://www.gotpests.org

Press Contact: Ned Porter, ned.r.porter@maine.gov, 207-287-7576

Related Files

Photo of Late Blight on Tomato (Credit:Division of Plant Industry Archive, Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Bugwood.org) [JPEG]