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.
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.
Co-authors were Christine Smart, professor of plant pathology and plant-microbe biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; F. Christopher Peritore-Galve, a doctoral student in the Smart Lab; and Christine Miller, a 2018 Smart Lab undergraduate summer intern from North Carolina State University.
Read more at Cornell University
Image: Martha Sudermann, right, and Chris Peritore-Galve, graduate students in the lab of plant pathology and plant microbe biology professor Chris Smart, examine tomatoes growing in a greenhouse at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva. CREDIT: Allison Usavage/Cornell University
