Numerous fruitful tomato trees are dying due to bacterial stroke in different fields of Chitalmari upazila of Bagerhat. As a result, local tomato farmers are at their wit’s end for fear of huge losses.
No pesticide can prevent this type of stroke. The roots of the trees get completely destroyed in this disease. As a result, pesticides are of no use. Agronomists say it is a soil-borne bacterial disease.
A good number of farmers have cultivated tomato by borrowing money this year. Numerous tomato plants are being infected with this bacterium just when the trees are bearing fruits following hard-work on the part of the farmers.
Now, all the efforts of the farmer are being wasted and the farmers are devastated. According to the Upazila office of the Agriculture Extension Department (DAE), a large number of tomato plants died of the same disease due to stroke in the upazila last year. As a result, scientific officials and agriculturists have carried out extensive experiments on tomato plants in the upazila. According to them, it is a soil borne disease which completely destroys the roots.
Tomato plants are affected by the disease in the form of epidemics as the soil is not refined well before planting tomato seedlings, they said.
They even opined that in three to four years, the tomato plant could no longer be cultivated on the affected land.
However, the officials of the department of agriculture are on high alert in this regard and they are giving overall cooperation to the farmers, they informed.
