Nematode Management, Soil Fertility, and Yield in Organic Vegetable Production

Abstract

Since organic vegetable producers in the United States cannot use synthetic pesticides, they must rely on alternative methods for pest management. In an organic vegetable production system in southwest Florida, summer solarization, compost, summer cover crops, and a resistant cultivar were used to manage Meloidogyne incognita and other plant-parasitic nematodes in a double-crop system with susceptible vegetable crops. At the beginning of autumn crops of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) and pepper (Capsicum annuum), population levels of M. incognita were lowest following summer solarization, intermediate following summer cover crops of browntop millet (Panicum ramosum), 'Iron Clay cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), or marigold (Tagetes minuta), and greatest following compost alone or a control (summer weeds). Most treatment differences did not persist into a spring vegetable crop. The exception was a treatment with 'Sanibel tomato, from which no M. incognita were recovered even at the end of

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