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Question by nanababa: What causes my tomatoes to be mottled in color when they rippen?
They’re big and look ready to be picked, but are a marbleized color- red & yellow.
Best answer:
Answer by sciencegravy
What kind of tomatoes are they? Hopefully, it’s a tomato that ripens to a bicolor streaking, like zebra, mr stripey, or the like.
However, since you say “mottling”, I fear it may be spotted wilt/impatiens necrotic spot. But often with that, you have brown to purple spots on the leaves, and possibly cankers on the stem. If this is the case, that’s bad news, as destroying the plants is really the only control. The disease is spread by thrips.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Does it look like this:
http://www.colostate.edu/Dept/CoopExt/4dmg/images/tswv1.jpg
If so, it’s tomato wilt virus. There is no treatment. Throw away the tomatoes and plants and don’t plant anything there for the next four years.
Could very well be the variety. Do you know?
Could be due to some insect feeding during development. Insects transmit virus which affects the whole plant. The degree depends on the virus. There are also soil disease problems, fusarium for example.
http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetablepatch/a/TomatoProblems_2.htm
The soil diseases are more troublesome as they may prevent future tomato planting or at the minimum planting only disease resistant varieties.
Thrips or leaf hopper transmitted viral diseases don’t transmit into the soil, so pulling the plant should affect future planting.