PLATTSBURGH — The fungal disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s has been found in Plattsburgh, with experts pressing for a quick reaction from local residents.

Late blight is a devastating fungal disease that spreads very quickly and affects plants of the solanaceae family.

“It affects eggplant, potatoes and tomatoes — with potatoes being the principle crop in this area,” said Anne Lenox Barlow, horticulture educator for Cornell Cooperative Extension in Clinton County.

It can also effect petunias, a relative.

“The last time that made it this far north was in the mid-1990s,” Lenox Barlow said. “But, this is the fist time that it’s been here this early.”

The disease moves quickly onto healthy plants and can kill an infected plant in as little as a week and half.

Spores also spread voraciously, traveling as far as four miles.

FOUND IN AREA

Late blight officially entered the region on Friday when it was discovered by Cornell Cooperative Extension at a local large retailer.

“(We) were alerted that a large vegetable transplant wholesaler had sold tomato plants to large retail stores up and down the East Coast that were infected by late blight,” Lenox Barlow said.

Local stores unknowingly sold the infected plants.

“They’ve since disposed of all their plants,” Lenox Barlow said.

She would not say which retail outlets sold the plants but did say they were major box stores.