White flies can become serious pests of certain vegetable crops, such as a green house tomato plants. These flies can damage the tomato plant by removing the plants sap, which contains the plants nutrients. This leaves the plant weakened with the leaves changing color. Whiteflies take more of the sap then they need, they emit the extra as a sticky material refereed to as honeydew. The honeydew covers the surface and eventually grows mold, with this and the plants sap removed it interferes with photosynthesis. Except a wild type tomato plant has not been truly identified but thought to have some sort of particular mechanism which repels whiteflies. This plant supplies a chemical reaction which makes the plant sap stick to the flies feeding tube. Now researches state, the wild type tomato and green house tomato are closely related with domestic varieties, meaning they believe they could crossbreed them to offer a resistance against whiteflies.
It makes sense the wild type tomatoes have a genetic change associated with them because they have been dealing with the flies for many years now and should be able to in away defend themselves. The indoor plants must have lost this gene somewhere along the way, but if crossbreeding is able to produce these plants that are all resistance one day it will be beneficial. After many years of dealing with this issue it is great to maybe finding away to keep these plants healthy as much as possible.
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