Soil solarization simulator

Abstract

Soil solarization is an environmentally friendly physical control method used in plant protection practices. Temperature, which is the primary factor in soil solarization, can be easily adjusted with a variety of devices that can maintain constant temperature in laboratory studies. However, the temperature changes every minute and day during soil solarization in field environments.Therefore, the objective of this work was to develop a device that simulates soil solarization in a laboratory environment in regard to temperature. For this purpose, a device was developed to reproduce temperature variations in a laboratory setting based on temperature data taken during soil solarization in a field setting. The temperature during solarization and the temperature of the simulation were compared. To demonstrate the success of the simulation, population fluctuations of two groups of microorganisms (Firmicutes as a bacterial phylum and Fusarium oxysporum as a fungal species) in the solarization and simulation settings were measured by real-time PCR and compared.The developed system was found to simulate temperature perfectly. The mean of the difference between solarization and simulation temperature values was −0.015 °C and R2 = 0.99966 (n = 9600). Microorganism population changes in the two groups verified the success of the simulation. The initial population of the Firmicutes was 5.77 × 107 fg g−1 soil. This value increased to 1.16 × 108 and 1.25 × 108 fg g−1 soil at the end of solarization and simulation, respectively. However, population of Fusarium oxysporum was decreased at the end of both applications. These changes between solarization and simulation were not statistically different.By developing this simulation, it is possible for researchers to perform preliminary studies in the laboratory many times before solarization. It is also possible to operate the simulation with previously collected temperature data for any location, year or soil depth. Source codes and schematics are available at https://github.com/uozyilmaz/SolarSim web page and are free to use.