Dheeraj S. Rathore and Dr. Michael T. Gaffney from the Horticulture Development Department, Teagasc, Ashtown share results from recent developments of Best4soil, a tool aimed at re-establishing soil health in Europe
“Healthy soils establish the foundation for sustainable horticultural and agricultural crop production, essential ecosystem functions and food security,” states the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. A handful of soil contains more microbial life than there are people on the planet earth. These countless microorganisms work continuously to provide a range of ecosystem services including supporting the functioning of the environment and providing resilience to changes in the environment. The soil also serves as the largest filter and storage tank for freshwater on the planet. Furthermore soil stores more carbon than the overall environment that subsists on the earth’s surface, through a process described as soil carbon sequestration. Moreover, soil accepts, decays, digests, cycles and stores all organic forms and converts it into nutrients that serve for the establishment of plants, animals and all other life forms on the planet. Successful agricultural production depends greatly on the health of the soil. Soil-borne diseases are major limiting factors in intensive crop production systems, negatively impacting plant health and in many instances requiring intervention with a plant protection product. The knowledge on the susceptibility of different crops to soil-borne phytopathogens and nematodes exist through numerous scientific and technical publications. Within Europe, there is a wide variation in the practice and knowledge of crop rotation, and a central location or facility to collate information on the susceptibility of crops to different soil-borne disease is warranted and needed. This need has led to the creation of a web-based decision support tool (DST) to assist growers/farmers in planning crop rotations which will be less impacted by the diseases of the previous crops. This tool has been created by collating information from scientific papers, manuals and institutional publications. However just collating this information is not enough, it needs to be accessible and its ultimate end users need to know it exists and how to use it. Therefore, one of the main objectives of the BEST4SOIL project is to build ‘community of practice’ (CoP) networks across Europe by inter-connecting growers, advisers, educators and researchers to maintain, improve or re-establish soil health in Europe. The BEST4SOIL project has repackaged this existing knowledge and will communicate the most up to date knowledge on the range of phytopathogens and nematodes affecting both agricultural and horticultural crops through factsheets, videos and grower events.
INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT
In 2014, the Sustainable Use of Pesticide Directive (128/2009) came into force in the European Union and in combination with Directive 1107/2019, there is now comprehensive legislation governing the placement and withdrawal of pesticides from the market together with for the first time, guidelines on the use phase of pesticides. As part of this new legislation on the ‘use’ phase, there is now a requirement for growers within the EU to produce crops in a manner compliant with the principles of Integrated Pest Management or IPM. IPM requires growers to consider alternatives to pesticides for crop protection purposes in the first instance, and only resort to synthetic pesticides as a ‘last resort’. Often there has been a heavy focus on replacing chemicals with biological or low impact alternatives, however, in many cases these products either don’t exist or are ineffective. More traditional approaches such as crop rotation, the incorporation of organic matter etc. are often undervalued, but may actually be more effective and the lowest cost to implement. The online tool or decision support tool created as part of this project aims to help growers by providing them with scientifically supported data, in an accessible form which will allow them to plan rotations with a view to minimising soil-borne disease and nematode carry over. While the use of the app will not prevent disease it will hopefully assist growers in (1) encouraging rotation as a plant health strategy and (2) reduce potential pesticide inputs which could be avoided.
IMPROVING SOIL HEALTH
As part of a general movement which is increasingly interested in the environmental impact of agriculture, there has been a surge of interest in research, education and advocacy to catalyse agricultural policies that support farmers & growers to conduct activities such as crop rotation which can improve soil health and help to mitigate against intensive agricultural production. Through published scientific literature, it is known that practices such as the application of compost/organic amendments, green manures/cover crops, anaerobic disinfestation (ASD) and bio-solarisation could potentially control soil-borne diseases. Thus, the BEST4SOIL thematic network will promote these practices to the growers by helping to select robust crop rotations which will lead to the maintenance and improvement of soil health across Europe. Furthermore, the network will strongly facilitate direct contacts between practitioners and researchers to exploit their diverse and extensive range of experience and knowledge. The CoP will expedite the improvement of regional and local soil health issues through the implementation of suitable crop rotations.
DECISION SUPPORT TOOL TO AID ROTATIONAL PRACTICE
For the last 12 months, Teagasc in cooperation with AgroScope and the University of Bern in Switzerland, Wageningen and DELPHY in Holland and SEGES in Denmark have been data mining to create a database upon which the tool will run. The databases have been populated with information on a range of pathogens and nematodes that affect vegetables, arable and cover crops, comprised of 29 horticultural and 40 arable/cover crops and their susceptibility to 106 soil-borne fungal pathogens and 52 nematode interactions. Teagasc were responsible for delivering the Horticultural portion of this database, which has been completed. This data set will be combined with data sets from partner countries and will be the basis of the Decision Support Tool being created at Wageningen in Holland. The tool will allow growers to input previous and future planned crops for a field and will return a number of potential diseases and nematodes which can be carried over from one crop into another. It will also provide advice, through a series of videos and factsheets on practical techniques growers can use to mitigate and reduce disease carry over. The tool and accompanying resources will be published in 22 languages and will be available by the end of 2019. A link to these resources will be available through the Horticulture section of the Teagasc website (www.teagasc.ie/Horticulture).
CONCLUSION
Increasingly it seems that Irish growers will have to manage their crops with fewer pesticide inputs. There is also a need to increase the rate of crop rotation currently practiced. Therefore, this will require increased planning and knowledge of disease interactions between different crops. However, it is unrealistic to expect growers to trawl through the scientific literature to identify potential threats to a crop. The DSS which has been developed will allow a grower to input their previous crops and their planned crop for a field or part of the field and the App will then list the potential soil-borne diseases or nematodes which may have the potential to be carried over from the previous crops into the next. It will also give some estimation of the potential crop damage caused by these diseases. Obviously growers will need to be aware of the diseases they had with previous crops, to allow them to fully assess the risk. The DSS will also suggest some mitigation techniques growers can implement to reduce disease pressure and links to factsheets and videos on these topics will be included in the DSS.
“A handful of soil contains more microbial life than there are people on the planet earth”
Many documents have highlighted the need for agriculture to provide more food to feed more people. This can only be achieved by taking steps to maintain our soil health and also reduce our dependence on an ever decreasing set of plant protection products. Actively managing and retaining healthy soils is essential for growing healthier (and more) food with less inputs, helping to reduce the overall impact on the soil-plant ecosystem and help make it more resilient to crop pests and diseases, soil compaction and changing climatic conditions. With this aim, the BEST4SOIL project team of advisers, breeders, communicators, educators, growers and researchers from eight European countries has compiled information in easily accessible forms. Beyond the core project group, 20 European countries are part of the BEST4SOIL network which is deploying local facilitators to set up the communities of practice to help promote soil management practices, to support and de-risk the adoption of more widespread rotations and innovative control strategies. To maintain, improve or reestablish soil health in Europe, BEST4SOIL has deployed three approaches; (i) adaptation of appropriate and optimised crop rotations, (ii) implementation of best practices with preventive effects such as use of compost, organic amendments, cover crops and green manures, and (iii) deployment of anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) and bio-solarisation methods to reduce the fungal inoculum, thus soil-borne diseases. The simple overall aim of the project is to provide information to growers and advisors throughout Europe, in a manner which allows them to practically apply the techniques highlighted, while providing a ‘support network’ of other growers and advisors interested in adopting, or with experience in implementing cultural approaches to soil health and soil-borne disease management.
Please note: All tools and publications referred to in the article will be available through the Teagasc website once launched. If you would like to receive a link when available or are interested in joining a ‘community of practice’, please email Michael.Gaffney@Teagasc.ie.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project is financially supported by the EU Horizon 2020, funded under grant agreement ID: 817696. We also acknowledge the support from the project partners in 12 EU countries. ✽
