•
RESEARCHDIARY
•
THE
VEGETABLE
FARMER •
MARCH 2017
Phytophthora infestans is a
major disease of potato and
tomato crops and
environmentally safe biological
methods of control or
prevention are the subject of
numerous studies. Many
biocontrolling agents occur in
plants or on their surfaces. A
team of Polish scientists have
been searching for effective
antagonists against P. infestans
among the isolates of endophyte
and epiphyte bacteria (Hortorum
Cultus).
37 endophyte and 26 epiphyte
bacterial strains isolated from
Equisetum arvense, Elymus
repens and Chenopodium album
were screened for their
antagonistic activity against
blight. Interestingly all tested
isolates showed antagonistic
properties against P. infestans.
The strongest activity was
observed for a Bacillus subtilis
strain. The antagonistic activity
of bacterial strains varied
depending on the plant or plant
part fromwhich they were
isolated. The best strains
inhibited disease growth by 40%
for most isolates.
Considerably more
development work is needed but
there is a real prospect of more
useful strains of bacteria
becoming available to provide
part of a disease control
programme. Growers will need
to take care to use the best
strain. Just specifying Bacillus
subtilis is likely to result in an
inappropriate strain being used.
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Micro-organisms’ activity against potatoblight
Faba bean intercropping under Latvian conditions
AquaCrop-OS water productivity model
Monoculture is used
extensively in conventional
agriculture, where a single
crop is cultivated on the
same land for a period of at
least 12-month. In organic
and integrated growing,
more attention is paid to
plant-environment
interactions with diverse
growing
systems such
as
intercropping,
catch crops,
and green
manure being
used. In field
experiments,
Latvian
researchers,
have evaluated
vegetable/faba
bean (Vicia faba) full
intercropping efficiency over
two consecutive growing
seasons, 2014 and 2015
(Journal of Science of Food
and Agriculture).
Results showed that the
most efficient intercropping
variants were cabbage/faba
bean (cabbage yield 1.27-
2.91kgm−2, immature faba
bean pods – 0.20-0.43kg
m−2) and carrot/faba bean
(carrot yield 1.67-2.28kg
m−2, immature faba bean
pods – 0.10-0.52kgm−2),
whilst onion and faba bean
intercrop is not
recommended for vegetable
growing since it induces a
very low onion yield (0.66 to
1.09kgm−2), although the
highest immature faba bean
pod yieldwas found in the
onion/faba bean
intercropping scheme (up to
0.56kgm−2).
Vegetable/faba bean
intercropping can be used in
practical horticulture for
carrot and cabbage
growing, to provide a
sustainable and
environmentally friendly
horticultural production
system.
Crop simulationmodels are
valuable tools for quantifying
crop yield response towater,
and for devising strategies to
improve agricultural water
management. But the
usefulness of most cropmodels
is limited greatly by a failure to
provide open-access tomodel
source codes. Work by an
international group of scientists
fromUniversity of Manchester,
University of Nebraska, Imperial
College, London, KU Leuven,
Belgium, University of Cordoba,
Spain and University of
California, Davis, have
presented an open-source
version of the FAO AquaCrop
model, which simulates
efficiently water-limited crop
production across diverse
environmental and agronomic
conditions (Agricultural Water
Management).
Themodel, called AquaCrop-
OpenSource (AquaCrop-OS),
can be run inmultiple
programming languages and
operating systems. Support for
parallel execution reduces
significantly simulation times
when applying themodel in
large geospatial frameworks,
for long-run policy analysis, or
for uncertainty assessment.
Furthermore, AquaCrop-OS is
compliant with the Open
Modelling Interface standard
facilitating linkage to other
disciplinary models, for
example to guide integrated
water resources planning.
(
).
