Backyard Aquaponics
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For the second time this has happened to my Tomatoes,the new growth is screwed up,for want of a better phrase,the inter web term was fern looking,the other growth has mottled coloritic spots which eventually go necrotic.At first it was maybe a deficiency but not all of them have it and there is nothing showing on anything else,i have done the goggly search and it does appear to be Tobacco Tomato Virus.I have binned some of the plants as they were stunted with quite bad symptoms,does anyone have experience of this...?

I'm not sure what you're wanting us to see Andreas. The color of the leaf looks a bit off but the thing that I notice most is the leaf miner damage. That would be the small tunnels throughout the leaves - in the pic with your hand, it's right next to your thumb but also on the other leaves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf_miner

http://hsc.csu.edu.au/agriculture/production/3362/pest_management.htm

http://jacksonville.com/entertainment/home-and-garden/2011-07-30/story/garden-qa-controlling-leafminers-usually-takes-some

Yes leaf miners are a scourge,even the wood vinegar as good as it is doesn’t seem to deter them all the time,Scotty in the first pic that ball of leaves is the new growth,now you would expect them to uncurl,but there not doing this fully,the way to describe them is Fern looking,these next three show better the difference between the plants.The first pic is a new plant that replaced a plant with quite bad symptoms,the next pic is a plant that has what ever is infecting the plants,it seems that when i transferred the plants into the DWC some of them had it,after several weeks one or two were stunted and looked terrible with deformed leaves,these plants then infected the plants next to them,which by this time had started to grow quite strongly but look like pic 2.The last pic are leaves 2/3rds of the way up the plant,clearly showing the necrosis spreading across the leaves,i believe its at this height as this is when the plants got infected,this being the new growth at that time.
I had taken suckers from some of the plants and was rooting them,half of them had this infection,the leaves curled up and started going colorotic,maybe 50% did this although they had rooted well,the others are showing no signs and are growing strongly with good root systems.Air temp might be contributing as it gets to 35c mid afternoon water temp is still 24c.I am thinking i might bin this lot and start again with fresh seeds,disinfecting my starting stain etc etc,but what about the system ? is it likely to remain and reinfect the next lot ?,growing Tom is new for me this is only the third or fourth attempt so i still have a lot to learn.
Hope these pics and explanation help more......

You may be right about starting over Andreas but even though I know that not all the plants are showing the same symptoms I suspect a problem with calcium and magnesium uptake. It could be caused by a virus but I'm thinking you have something else going on. It could be caused by excess potassium as a toxicity issue. Have you tried spraying with chelated calcium or magnesium, especially chelated calcium though? I'm suspicious that you have nutrient lockout. Best to spray this on since it isn't a very mobile nutrient and any added to the solution may just be locked out again. Anyway to my mind the symptoms are those of calcium and magnesium deficiency, whatever the cause

Are you seeing any blossum end rot, you might not but this would again indicate calcium problems?

http://sdhydroponics.com/resources/articles/gardening/cal-mag-and-plants

http://sdhydroponics.com/resources/articles/gardening/cal-mag-and-plants

High temps along with high humidity can also cause problems with calcium deficiency and there may be some other things listed here that are of use to you -

http://www.aces.edu/dept/extcomm/specialty/ber.html

Hope this helps

Hi DB
As I understand it. You think you have a virus infection.

The main question however is. Is it in the system?

Commercial Hydroponics, John Mason

Once a plant has a viral disease it is virtually impossible to eliminate it.
Control in such cases involves replacing plants every few years with virus free stock.

Prevent spread by controlling sucking insects (aphids etc)

You describe a slow outward spread of infection from an infected plant.
I would suggest that is consistent with insect spread.

System contamination would IMHO be even over the whole system.

Take a look at the lesions on the leaves as they are just starting are they lighter colored circular areas or do they appear bounded by the contours of the leaf veins. Helps sometimes to hold the leaf so it's backlit. Seems like viruses often have circular or ring shaped areas where the cells have been lysed (broken open) as the virus particles were released and drift away from the initial infection. These usually look lighter in color than the surrounding tissue. If it's just bounded by the veins then I think it's more likely a deficiency although it's really tough to rule out a virus.

Do you have any fruit on these plants? Pictures of same?

I first thought magnesium and calcium deficiency but even with foliar feeding they keep getting worse,now as a bench mark my chillies and peppers have never looked better and in the past if there was a deficiency in either of those two they would show it,in the last toms that had these symptoms there was no end rot and again foliar feeding made no change and only half the Toms have it as in the first pic it is a perfectly healthy plant no symptoms throughout.I will do the back lit thing tomorrow to see if this shows anything and as for fruit they are just having there first fruit.
I will look into potassium toxicity,but wouldn’t i see that in other plants ?

Has anyone who smokes been touching your tomato plants?

Hmm, doesn't sound promising. What form was the calcium in that you sprayed on the plants?

Are all of these cuttings the same variety of tomato or is there a mix? Probably most of the plants would show the toxicity or deficiency symptoms around the same time but it doesn't always happen this way - maybe some are further away from the inlet or have fewer roots or their is less oxygen available .

+1 on Smatthews question - although I doubt this is TMV it's still a good way to spread viruses from tobacco to tomato.

Hm!
Forgive me.
As I understand it the live virus can be transferred by touch from an infected tobacco plant to another.
A common danger among smoking and non-smoking tobacco workers.
Hand washing!
Are you really saying that this virus will survive processing. Being burnt. Inhaled, transmitted through the human blood stream in sufficient concentrations that touch will infect a plant?

Coming from the lit end of a cigarette, not likely. So the answer is Yes and No, that's not what's being said . This publication will give you the idea but basically holding certain types of tobacco products in your hands, not even smoking or chewing them and then touching a plant can transfer TMV. Some types of processing reduce the number of viruses and other types of processing don't have as much of an affect. I believe this has to do with heat denaturing the proteins in the coat of the virus but I'm just guessing on this. I'll let you read the rest for yourself -

http://extension.psu.edu/pests/plant-diseases/all-fact-sheets/tobacco-mosaic-virus-in-greenhouses

http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/17/2/241.full.pdf

Yes me...



Calcium is a Foliar Product containing 22% calcium and other nutrients,i dont think its air there 30lpm through 4 stones in each bed and Toms are all the same variety from the same batch of seeds,although i don’t think TMV can be carried over in seeds,might be wrong though.I will dump the seeds just in case.
Thanks for the links scotty,the first link is similar to the information i found thats what made me think it was TMV,the heading made made shudder a bit where it says it can infect 350 varietties,i thought it was just Toms...
I have one very healthy Tom at the end of the raft,i am going to deliberately try to infect it,i will rub an infected leaf to raise sap then rub it on the good plant and see what happens,if its a deficiency then nothing should happen if its TMV we will see,if i already have it i can’t make things any worse by doing this.
Next step will be to harvest the celery thats in this raft,there is about a 80 plants growing under the Toms,dump the Toms then throughly clean and disinfect the entire bed,then before i replant try to work out how to do the same with the other,i have seen nothing that says it can live on anything other than surfaces and litter no mention of water or hydro solution...
Thanks Guys if we get to the bottom of this it could be useful information for others in the future if anyone else suffers similar,i will tell you what pisxxxxes me of though is to spend so much time battling the bugs and to finally have that under control and now this....

Sounds like a good plan Andreas, let us know what happens.

Two things,the first i have only just noticed how i spelt Tobacco,OMG......
The first two pics are Toms at either end of the DWC with the second pic the plant i tried to infect,nothing has happened after 6 days,with the plant still growing strongly.
The last pic is of one of the plants i thought was infected,this growth is at the 2/3rds height of the plant with the older growth reasonable ok and the new growth the same,there is just this position in the plant were something went wrong.
I dumped all the other plants and have started again,but because i wasn’t sure what was going on i kept this one and of course the other three in the pics,totally confused now.

Is it possible that by removing the other tomatoes you improved the flow to all the plant roots and made the symptoms go away? Just thinking it sort of sounds like an environmental problem

edit: Forgot to ask if you dumped some of the system water as well. If you had some issue with nutrient lockout this might have an affect

Still a mystery I guess.