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Common Disease-Spreading Pests
Farmer's Weekly
|Farmer's Weekly 18 August 2017
Tomatoes are notoriously susceptible to pests and diseases. For this reason, researchers constantly screen wild species in the hope of finding resistant genes to protect crops against new diseases or pathogens that have mutated to infect formerly resistant plants. It’s a never-ending battle.
The arrival of new pests, often from other countries, is also a constant problem. The pests damage crops, which is bad enough, but in addition, many are vectors for diseases that compound the damage.
Plant breeders are at work to develop varieties containing an acyl sugar, which acts as an insect repellent. The relevant gene is from a wild tomato species. Unfortunately, bad traits are also transferred in the process, and the fact that the gene is recessive makes the task extremely difficult. The breeders must retain the gene carrying the insect-repelling qualities, while gradually eliminating the negative characteristics.
WESTERN FLOWER THRIP AND SPOTTED WILT
This story is from the Farmer's Weekly 18 August 2017 edition of Farmer's Weekly.
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