STRAWBERRY ROOT ROT IN RELATION TO MICROBIOLOGICAL CHANGES INDUCED IN ROOT ROT SOIL BY THE INCORPORATION OF CERTAIN COVER CROPS

Abstract

Strawberry plants, variety Premier, were grown in naturally-infected root rot soil in which consecutive "crops" of several agricultural plants had been turned under, and in other lots of the same soil that had been steam sterilized or fertilized with barnyard manure. On examination of their roots it was found that the incidence and severity of root rot were closely correlated with soil treatment. Plants grown in sterilized soil remained free from disease as did those of the soybean series until the third season when they were slightly affected. Plants in the manure, corn, red clover, timothy, and untreated soil series all became diseased, the severity of attack increasing in the respective series in the order named.Although roots of the various cover crops were found to contain representatives of several different genera of fungi, a specific fungus was dominant in each as was the nematode, Pratylenchus pratensis, in timothy and clover. This build-up of specific organisms appeared to be correlated with the incidence and severity of the disease in the roots of the strawberry plants that followed in the respective series.However, in strawberry plants grown in the variously treated soils, fungal infection was negligible and, on the whole, not related to that of the preceding cover crop. An exception to this was the heavy infection by the mycorrhizal fungus (Rhizophagus sp.?), following timothy and corn, but a lack of correlation, in many cases, between the presence of the fungus and discoloured and necrotic tissue indicated that other agencies might be responsible for the injury. In timothy and red clover treated soils, nematodes, particularly Pratylenchus pratensis, might have been an important factor.Fewer bacteria were found adjacent to roots of healthy plants than to those of diseased ones. Qualitative differentiation on the basis of nutritional requirements indicated a striking relationship between the incidence of certain groups of bacterial isolates and the severity of disease attack. The equilibrium between presumably "harmful" bacteria and the innocuous, normally occurring rhizosphere types is designated the Bacterial Balance Index. There are marked differences in the microbiological equilibria of the different soil series; increased severity of root rot is associated with a fall in the Bacterial Balance Index.