ATLANTA – The tomato may be a mainstay at summer cookouts, but some Georgia growers have been less eager to welcome the beloved produce to their fields.

For them, tomatoes represent a costly – and risky – endeavor. It can cost about $11,000 per acre to grow tomatoes, only for disease to wipe them out, says Bill Brim, with Lewis Taylor Farms in Tifton.

“We really walk real slow with tomatoes because they’re so expensive to grow,” Brim said of the farm’s 150 acres dedicated to tomatoes – just a fraction of its overall produce operation. “You can lose a lot of money real quick with tomatoes.”

Brim knows the risks all too well. The yellow leaf curl virus, which plagued the region a decade ago, reemerged last fall and devastated his tomato crop. Brim mustered about 300 boxes per acre, which was a far cry from the expected 3,000 boxes, he said.

That virus has reappeared just as another has been seemingly snuffed out.

The tomato spotted wilt virus, a particularly brutal disease, took a toll on Georgia’s spring crops over the last few decades. It has also found its share of loathers among gardeners wanting to slice up their own homegrown tomato.

Seed companies have since trotted out dozens of new seed varieties fortified against that spring virus, and those offerings are the focus of a new trial that researchers say is meant to make Georgia producers more comfortable with growing the popular produce.

The Vidalia Onion and Vegetable Research Center, located in the state’s hallowed onion country, is trying out a dozen new varieties created in the last few years that are resistant to the tomato spotted wilt virus.

“They can’t rely on information generated in the ‘80s or ‘90s because all those varieties are outdated,” the center’s Cliff Riner said of growers. “So we’re trying to rewrite the book.”

Once the tomatoes are harvested in the coming weeks, growers will be invited in to examine the center’s harvest and participate in a sort of tomato tasting, which Riner called the “true test.”

Tomatoes are a valuable crop in Georgia that was worth $54 million in 2014, according to the most recent Farm Gate Value Report from the University of Georgia. The majority of them were grown in large operations in the southwest corner of the state.

Even so, they represent just a sliver of the vegetables grown here, although it’s enough for Georgia to claim a top spot for total production in the country. California and Florida easily grow far more.

The state’s growers typically cultivate about 3,500 acres of tomatoes ever year. Compare that to the state’s reigning vegetable, the onion, to which farmers dedicate about 12,000 acres.

The expense of growing tomatoes is what scares many farmers away, said Tim Coolong, an extension vegetable specialist in Tifton who is working with Riner on the study. The crop, which must be staked, requires steep upfront costs and is labor-intensive.

Other crops, such as snap beans, come with much lower initial costs.

“We see more growers trying 100 acres of snap beans where they would never touch tomatoes,” he said.

Coolong said the trial is geared toward farmers in Georgia who might be willing to dabble in tomatoes on a small scale. He said onion farmers, in particular, have lately started to diversify.

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.