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  • Amateur Gardening

    Focus on… Tomato blight

    Aug 04, 2020 5 minutes
    with Lucy Chamberlain, AG’S fruit and veg expert

    REGULAR tomato growers will shudder over blight, which often appears in warm, wet summers. I should specify that I’m referring to late blight caused by the fungus-like Phytophthora infestans; this also attacks potatoes. So why exactly is tomato blight so horrific, and what can we do to protect our growing fruits?

    Chasing mutants

    The speed at which infections can spread is alarming, and crops are ruined in the process. Someone once described the symptoms as looking like creosote had been thrown on their plants overnight, which about sums it up. The pathogen readily mutates, and sadly this is its trump card. ‘Resistant’ tomato varieties are bred, blight mutates, and resistant varieties are then susceptible to this new strain.

    “The speed at which infection spread is alarming”

    Around 15 years ago, one

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