Name
Effects of soil health management strategies on soil characteristics and potato yield
Date & Time
Tuesday, July 19, 2022, 3:15 PM - 5:15 PM
Description

Maintaining and improving soil health in agricultural systems is essential to long-term environmental and economic sustainability. One of the most effective approaches to improving soil health is minimizing soil disturbance, but heavy soil disturbance is unavoidable during the years potatoes are grown. As part of the SCRI Potato Soil Health Project, we are conducting field experiments to determine how other methods for improving soil health affect soil characteristics, soilborne pathogens, and potato tuber yield and disease symptoms. Reported here is one of eight parallel field experiments set up across the US. Six experimental treatments were applied to plots on both two-year and three-year rotation schedules on a loamy sand soil in Becker, MN. The first four treatments evaluate the cultivars Russet Burbank and Norkotah Russet grown under (1) a conventional potato-soy or potato-corn-soy rotation or (2) a potato-pea/mustard or potato-corn-pea/mustard rotation with turkey manure applied in each year except the pea/mustard year. All of these treatments were fumigated with metam sodium in the fall before the first potato year. In 2021, the year before the second potato year in both rotations, the first two treatments were fumigated again, while the mustard cover crop served as a biofumigant in the third and fourth treatments. The fifth and sixth treatments received no fumigant but were otherwise treated like the first and second treatments. Russet Burbank and the Verticillium-resistant cultivar Bannock Russet were planted in these treatments. The effects of these treatments on potato tuber yield and disease symptoms in the first year of each rotation, and on soil characteristics and populations of Verticillium propagules and root-lesion nematodes throughout the study will be presented.

Session Type
Poster
Parent Session
Posters