Jul. 2--ALBANY -- An Alabama-based plant wholesaler linked to a destructive tomato blight that turned up in northern big-box retail stores has pulled its plants from New York and five other states.

But company officials at Bonnie Plants harbor doubts that the plant disease, known as late blight, originated in its greenhouses, which extend into 38 states, company General Manager Dennis Thomas said on Wednesday.

Pulling plants out of stores in New York, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts since news of the blight broke last week has probably cost the company $1 million in lost sales, Thomas said.

In New York, diseased tomato seedlings were found for sale in a Scotia retailer, according to Cornell Cooperative Extension, with reports also coming in from Tompkins County, Plattsburgh and Malone.

"We are not irresponsible," said Thomas, of the 91-year-old company, which has 62 greenhouse complexes. Inspections by state officials of company greenhouses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey found no evidence of the blight, according to records provided.

The company did not knowingly ship any infected tomato plants, and questioned whether the blight, a fungus-based disease that can spread through the air, may have occurred after plants arrived at Northeast retailers, Thomas said. The company shipped most of its tomatoes to the region during April and May, he said.

Infected plants display dark spots, or lesions, the size of a quarter or larger. Lesions become water-soaked after watering or from heavy dew, with edges showing a border of white fungus. The fungus releases spores that spread the disease.

Blight is more common during cool, rainy summers, like the kind now under way in the Northeast. "It it had been hot and dry, this never would have happened," he said.

Cornell had linked the blight to shipments from a company greenhouse in Georgia. That greenhouse uses organic methods, which do not include the pesticides that can keep blight at bay, said Thomas. He said "less than one percent" of the company's tomato shipments this spring came from that greenhouse.

Thomas said the company, which supplies large retailers like Wal-Mart, Lowe's and Home Depot, expects to have its plants reappear on store shelves in the northeast by the end of the month, when it will ship herbs and cold-weather plants.

Next year, the company will reduce the risk of blight attacking its plants by shipping only hybrid tomato seedlings, rather than heirloom tomato seedlings, he said.

Brian Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or by email at bnearing@timesunion.com.

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