It is conservatively estimated by prominent tomato growers and shippers in Texas that annually more than 15 per cent. of the Texas tomato crop is lost due to a condition commonly known as "Tomato Pops," or "Tomato Puffs." The trouble is serious in all the Southern States. At present the cause or causes of this abnormal condition are unknown, presenting a challenge to the Experiment Station work...

Postharvest losses (PHL) are incurred in the tomato value chain in Ghana and solar drying of tomato is a promising technology for reducing the loss. However, there are concerns on the usage, functionality and sensory appeal of the dried products to consumers, compounded with the lack of information and research on dried tomato processing in Ghana. A survey was carried out by administering semis...

The genus Physalis includes a number of commercially important edible and ornamental species. Its high nutritional value and potential medicinal properties leads to the increased commercial interest in the products of this genus worldwide. However, lack of molecular markers prevents the detailed study of genetics and phylogeny in Physalis, which limits the progress of breeding. In the present s...

Tomato crop is primarily infected by various common diseases like Bacterial Canker, bird's-eye fruit spots, Bacterial Spot, Chlorosis, Curly Top, Early Blight, Fusarium Wilt, Gray Leaf, Gray Mold Rot, Leaf Mold, Leaf Roll and Leaf Curl, Powdery mildew, Septoria Leaf Spot, Tobacco Mosaic Virus, Verticillium Wilt. The presented work describes a algorithm for different disease detection based on t...

The invasive brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), is an important pest of field crops, fruit orchards, commercial vegetables, ornamental plants, and home vegetable gardens. Pheromone-baited traps designed to attract, trap, and kill H. halys are marketed for use in home gardens to reduce damage to plants. To test this assertion, we conducted the followi...

Acylsugars are synthesized in the glandular trichomes of the Solanaceae family and are implicated in protection against abiotic and biotic stress. Acylsugars are composed of either sucrose or glucose esterified with varying numbers of acyl chains of differing length. In tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), acylsugar assembly requires four acylsugar acyltransferases (ASATs) of the BAHD superfamily. To...

Enterovirus 71 (EV71) causes seasonal epidemics of hand-foot-and-mouth disease associated with fatal neurological complications in young children, and several major outbreaks have occurred recently. This study developed an effective antiviral agent by transforming the gene for VP1 protein, a previously defined epitope and also a coat protein of EV71, into tomato plant. VP1 protein was first fus...

Few intraspecific genetic linkage maps have been reported for cultivated tomato, mainly because genetic diversity within Solanum lycopersicum is much less than that between tomato species. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the most abundant source of genomic variation, are the most promising source of polymorphisms for the construction of linkage maps for closely related intraspecific lin...

Tomato production in the Mediterranean region and elsewhere is under constant threat of the whitefly-transmitted begomoviruses that cause Tomato yellow leaf curl disease (TYLCD). Sequencing has indicated that the generic ‘TYLCV’ includes a large number of viruses and strains. We studied the distribution of the tomato yellow leaf curl disease-associated viruses in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Leban...

Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) is currently the most sensitive technique used for absolute and relative quantification of a target gene transcript, requiring the use of appropriated reference genes for data normalization. To accurately estimate the relative expression of target tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) genes responsive to several virus species in reverse transcription qPC...