The plants are most susceptible when they are blooming, so pay particular attention to the flowers if the weather is cool and wet. Spores are most likely to infect tomato plants after 16-72 hours of continuous wetness with a relative humidity that is greater than 90 percent. Nighttime temperatures around 60☏ are particularly favorable for infection. White mold is a disease of cool, wet weather – temperatures from 59 to 70☏. If you cut the sclerotia open, their insides are pinkish-white. The tissues become even more bleached and brittle, and in seven to 10 days, the black sclerotia are formed. The fruit can also be infected, turn gray, and rot.Īs the disease progresses, the plant will wilt. It then spreads to the flowers, petioles, leaves, and stems. Next, a white fuzzy mold grows both inside and outside the plant. At first, the disease manifests as watery soft rots and bleached areas on the leaf axils and stems. The first sign of infection by this pathogen is at the base of the main stem at the soil line or on lower branches. This symptom in tomatoes gives the disease its alternate name, timber rot. You can find them inside tomato tissue that has turned white and dry due to the disease. The sclerotia form in or on dead plant tissue. These survival structures look like rat droppings – small, black, hard, cylindrical objects.
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