Article
Microbe Diversity Key to Disease Wave Control
by Dr Ash Martin PhD BSc(For)Hons
A healthy soil is often defined as a stable soil system with high levels of biological diversity and activity, internal nutrient cycling, and resilience to disturbance. Soil disturbance due to nutrient addition, tillage, or drying-rewetting, or other practices causes the number and diversity of soil microbes to start to oscillate, both in time and space, and can be detected using the Microbe Wise for Soil method. The oscillations appear as moving waves along the path of a moving nutrient source such as a root tip. This means that soil-borne pathogens and antagonists alike will fluctuate in time and space as a result of growing plant roots and other disturbances.
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Read the in-depth article:
van Bruggen et al. (2006). Relation between soil health, wave-like fluctuations in microbial populations, and soil-borne plant disease management. European Journal of Plant Pathology. 115: 105-122. (Requires PDF viewer)