| Recent trend depicts that tomatoes and tomatoes products rank 2nd most important vegetable crop in the United States after potatoes and potatoes products contributing 20 percent of total vegetable production. More-so, tomato is equally ranked 2nd in the United States in terms of production value, generating $1.3 billion after head lettuce that contributed $1.4 billion in the same time period. In 2006, 422,000 acres of tomatoes were planted in the United States. Tomato is equally an important economic crop in the state of Georgia. In 2008, it ranked 14th in the Georgia vegetable acreage as 3,985 acres were planted. It also ranked 6th in terms of farm gate value in the same time period generating $51.2 million. Thrips-vectored tomato spotted wilt virus... |
