Last night's lecture by Dr. Judith Brown from the University of Arizona, a plant virologist, was on the fairly new virus here in Arizona: the Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus that causes field-grown tomatoes to become stunted, lose their fruit, and curl their leaves which often turn yellow in the process. This virus originated from the Middle East, and was brought to Europe and the Americas from Israel to Europe and places further west. The commercial agricultural businesses are to blame for this, but how could the virus, that was previously unknown here until 2006, be identified? It hit the eastern US and Texas almost ten years earlier. The whitefly is the vector.
Dr Brown showed us infrared photos of the Yuma Valley, were a great part of vegetables are grown in the US Southwest. The entire orchard was overtaken by the virus within three weeks. We all gasped in awe of the quickly-spreading virus.
If this virus spreads any further it could wipe out the entire tomato crop in the US. Processing tomatoes alone is a $760 million business, the largest processed vegetable; jobs could be lost and orchards could go out of business. It's truly a scary possibility if no treatment can be found in a timely matter.
The CCMG has montly meetings the first Thursday of the month. Every meeting is preceeded by a very informative briefing such as Dr Brown's from last night. I missed last month's briefing on ants and termites, something I would have loved to have attended. These montly meetings are required for CCMGs to maintain their docent status, something I still am a month away from achieving.
http://gemini.biosci.arizona.edu/viruses/tylcv/
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