EIP-AGRI Focus Group on Soil-borne diseases: Final report

The EIP-AGRI Focus Group on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices for soil-borne diseases has now presented its recommendations for future research topics, ideas for Operational Groups and new developments in its final report.

Soil-borne diseases are major yield-limiting factors and difficult to control, and applied knowledge on how to use suppression techniques is limited. The EIP-AGRI Focus Group on soil-borne diseases brought together current knowledge on innovative techniques for the suppression of soil-borne disease (fungi and nematodes), such as:
• the use of compost and organic matter amendments
• the use of green manure and cover crops
• biofumigation
• anaerobic soil disinfestation
• solarisation
• inundation
• the use of biological control agents
• grafting

Long-term experiments are essential to be able to judge the validity of the measures taken and demonstrate how a soil health strategy can lead to future profits. This can help provide a convincing argument to implement measures now. The Focus Group stated that a strategy for good soil health is the starting point. Spanish translation courtesy of the RRN (Red Rural Nacional).