What is killing my seedlings?

[LJ in NY]

I have about 60 tomato seedlings started(2-4 plants of about 20 different varieties). All are doing fine except my Cape Teaser seedings. I have 4 and they are all in various stages of death and dying. It started with the leaves growing in a strange shriveled manner and then the stems got a weird bumpy discolored thing and some of the leaves have the weird bumpy thing going on too. I've been starting tomatoes by seed for 20 years & I've never seen this. Same soil, light, growing conditions as my other seedlings. I'm thinking they can't be saved. Help!

Cape Teaser6.jpg

Cape Teaser4.jpg

Cape Teaser1.jpg

Cape Teaser 3.jpg

[Mojo]

I was about to come on and post a question about tomato apex necrosis virus (ToANV), which some of my friends suspect it to be. (TV/Houston peeps: that would be Roy and Shelly, who still outrank me.) But this might not be it, unless yours starts at the top.

[bower]

The last pic of Cape teaser looks like a really severe case of edema.
That being said, IDK why it would affect them only and the others not at all, in the same conditions. They are obviously highly susceptible. You would expect to see it to a lesser degree on some others at least, with conditions being more or less equal.
Unless something happened with the Cape Teasers' potting mix - something crazy bad.
If a plant gets edema and it affects their stems, they won't recover. They're done.
And if it isn't edema, I would toss them anyway. Worse if it could be contagious, and They are toast! Would not reuse their potting mix either.
two cents.

[LJ in NY]

I just googled edema- I think you're right. It's weird that it's only affecting the Cape Teaser because they are potted up with the same mix as the others and the plants are mixed in with the other tomatoes (I generally don't keep plants together by variety, I mix and move them around as I need space and rearrange them if they are growing too close to the light or need to be moved closer to the light). I've checked the other tomatoes & they look fine. I wonder if the variety is unusually succeptible...

I'm going to pitch them and start over. I'll try to monitor the water and over water one, under water another and water normally for the third.

thank you!

[Nan6b]

I'd toss them and their soil. You could try to re-plant. It is possible there is some sort of disease in the seeds themselves. To kill seed-borne diseases, use a sous-vide machine. (borrow one?) Soak the seeds at 122 F for 25 minutes precisely. You can plant them immediately.

[bower]

It is true that some varieties are not very susceptible to edema at all, while others are more so - sometimes a lot more!
I do think that some seed sanitation process might be helpful, in case this is caused or promoted by some unhelpful microbe.

[mention]Mojo[/mention] it's shocking to see the long list of "new" or "emerging" tomato diseases. Hadn't even heard of the apex virus.

I remembered reading about a bacterium that causes "tomato pith necrosis" - this is a bit different from physiological edema, with brown streaks and chambering in the stems being diagnostic. Again, I see they are calling it "emerging" disease and not that much is known about it.
It is probably not the cause of LJ's problem but another example of an unexpected organism that can mess with plants in unexpected ways.
https://vegcropshotline.org/article/pit ... of-tomato/

Basically any virus or bacteria that affected the plants' vascular system could push them into the edema state, I think.

[mama_lor]

Yeah, it's edema. This year seems to be a common phenomenon. It's quite bad when it affects the stems, those are probably goners. The newer info suggests it's very related to variety (maxifort is particularly susceptible) and lack of UV, besides moisture and humidity.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ant_Leaves
https://ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/ ... sequence=1

[bower]

I think this is becoming more common, and more commonly recognized, because more people are switching to LED lights and the deficiency of certain wavelengths causes extreme cases that are really noticeable.
With regards the Cape Teaser susceptibility, you might try putting one in a window [mention]LJ in NY[/mention] in case it is caused mainly by the lights.