This is one (of 18) I'm going to be growing for the first time this year.

Vinson Watts 85-90 days

The tomato is a large pink tomato flavored with an excellent balance of sugars and acids. It is the most disease resistant tomato that I know of-the result of 52 summers of careful selection for flavor, texture, and disease resistance. Prior to his death in March, 2008, Vinson Watts improved his namesake tomato for fifty-two summers. The original seed was from Lee County, Virginia and given to him by his work supervisor, Wilson Evans, at Berea College.

Here is a link that might be useful: Vinson Watts seeds

I'm looking for disease resistant OP tomatoes I have a terrible time with anthranose, early blight and late blight. Do any of you have any suggestions.

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First, there is no such thing as resistance when it comes to tomatoes, it's tolerance, which is not the same as resistance. (smile)

Early Blight is due to A. solani and Late Blight is due to P. infestans. If you have P. infestans then there are no OP's I can think of that give resistance, let alone tolerance, and that includes the variety Legend, which was bred for Late Blight tolerance but it hasn't turned out that way when grown by most folks.

And Late Blight is usually lethal within a couple of weeks leaving a stinling mess of black rotten tissue.

Early Blight and Late Blight can both appear either early or late in the season/

And anthracnose is never a problem for me until late in the season when the nights start turning cooler and I don't know of any OP's that are tolerant to anthracnose. Anthracnose is a very common fungus that's airborne almost everywhere.

So what can one do about the major FUNGAL tomato diseases, which are the foliage diseases, such as Early Blight and Septoria Leaf Spot?

There are a couple of Early Blight tolerant varieties out there but they aren't very tolerant and without checking I think both are hybrids. it just means that a large commercial farmer can spray maybe every 6-7 days rather than every 4-5 days which is a huge savings for the commercial farmer.

One can use an excellent anti-fungal spray which works best as a preventative rather than a cure. Yes, I could name one, but will wait to see what others have to say as well.

The bacterial foliage pathogens Bacterial Speck and Bacterial Spot have no good treatments, at least for the home gardener.

Carolyn

I found these in my Totally Tomatoes catalog. "Old Brooks" I, too, have probs with late blight and these are supposed to be early and late blight resistant as well as resist blossom-end rot. (Okay, so maybe they should have listed it as 'tolerate'.) Anyhow, I'm going to try them this year. 6-8oz and slightly acidic. I'm going to use them for canning if they don't go all spotty on me... At this point I'll try most anything! :-)
Kris

Tabbiea,

Here is a link to information about West Virginia 63 a tomato developed by the University of West Virginia to be resistant to LATE BLIGHT.

I don't know about a variety that is resistant to all three of your problems. I doubt Vinson Watts is all that bullet proof. It wasn't for me in 2007. Nice tomato. Really nice. But went down to some sort of wilt LONG before many other open pollinated neighbors did ... like Indian Stripe, Spudakee and Novikov's Giant to name just 3 that far outlasted Vinson Watts.

I don't know of any OP line that has resistance to all the diseases you mention.

One hardier line in tests has been 'West Virginia 63'. Other lines are not really available and tend to be cherries.

One thing you can do is to adapt your cultural methods to help reduce the amount of disease or condtions which make it thrive.

Dry foliage is key with all three. This could mean spacing plants farther apart, using grow tunnels, orienting to take advantage of the drying effect of wind, etc.. First, there is no such thing as resistance when it comes to tomatoes, it's tolerance, which is not the same as resistance.

This is not a correct statement.

From the Plant Pathology Department at Cornell On-Line Glossary of Technical Terms in Plant Pathology

resistance. The ability of an organism to exclude or overcome, completely or in some degree, the effect of a pathogen or other damaging factor

tolerance. 1. The ability of a plant to sustain the effects of a disease without dying or suffering serious injury or crop loss.

Many objects are marketed as "resistant" while with sufficient effort one could stain a "stain resistant" shirt, wrinkle a "wrinkle-resistant" pair of pants, etc. under certain extreme circumstances, while the article of clothing remains definitively stain or wrinkle resistant under normal circumstances.

Same with tomatoes. In terms of general and maybe even quasi-scientific terminology, I'd consider a tomato plant resistant to a specific disease if the plant is capable of fulfilling its natural end function, to produce viable seeds, before succumbing to the disease. I'd prefer a plant that could produce a reasonable crop of edible tomatoes for ME while it's hellbent on fulfilling its natural function of self-perpetuation, though :::smile:::

First, there is no such thing as resistance when it comes to tomatoes, it's tolerance, which is not the same as resistance.
This is not a correct statement.

From the Plant Pathology Department at Cornell On-Line Glossary of Technical Terms in Plant Pathology

resistance. The ability of an organism to exclude or overcome, completely or in some degree, the effect of a pathogen or other damaging factor
tolerance. 1. The ability of a plant to sustain the effects of a disease without dying or suffering serious injury or crop loss.

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Keith, there was a reason that the tomato industry changed the word from resistant to tolerant and that was b'c a few years back some large scale commercial farmers sued the companies that offered the hybrids they were growing b'c the plants did come down with diseasaes that the hybrids were supposed "resistant" for.

Not everyone distinguishes between resistant and tolerant but I'm most comfortable doing so.

And yes, I read those Cornell definitions twice and when I see resistant says resistant "in some degree" then I'm back at square one on this issue as well you can imagine and I'm going to continue to use the word tolerant instead of resistant. My choice and also the choice of some others.

Carolyn

Funny major seed companies for the tomato industry I look at online still use "resistant". Guess they missed the memo.

Johnny's has a line they say is early-blight resistant in their commercial growers catalog.

Numhem's lists resistances.

So does Roger's.

Even Tomato Grower's Supply claims 'resistance'.

Seiger's and BHN differentiates between resistant/tolerant but they still list resistances.

Resistant/resistance is still used in the latest research too. Usually the difference between the labels of tolerance vs resistance has to do with the genetics being heterozygous vs homozygous for a given trait. Such is the case with TSWV.

There are other cases where only tolerance is found.

There is also the more precise term of horizontal vs vertical resistance. There some may just say "tolerance" instead of explaining what exactly horizontal resistance is. Such is the case with Randy's early blight material.

Of the varieties I have grown, the most tolerant/resistant ones are Early Girl, Carbon, Red Mortgage Lifter, and Neves Azorean Red.
These will comprise the majority of my tomato plants this coming summer.

I no longer grow cherry tomatoes.........they cross pollinate too easiy, and I like to save seeds from my larger OP varieties and have them come true to name each year.

Carolyn, you keep up the technical stuff and I will just keep raising wonderful tomatoes. LOL