Crop Rotation and Minimal Tillage Selectively Affect Maize Growth Promotion under Late Wilt Disease Stress

Abstract

In recent years, worldwide scientific efforts towards controlling maize late wilt disease (LWD) have focused on eco-friendly approaches that minimize the environmental impact and health risks. This disease is considered to be the most severe threat to maize fields in Israel and Egypt, and a major growth restraint in India, Spain, and Portugal. Today’s most commonly used method for LWD control involving resistant maize genotypes is under constant risk from aggressive pathogen lines. Thus, this study’s objectives were to evaluate the effect of crop rotation and avoiding tillage on restraining the disease. Such an agrotechnical approach will support the continuity of soil mycorrhiza networks, which antagonize the disease’s causal agent, Magnaporthiopsis maydis. The method gained positive results in previous studies, but many knowledge gaps still need to be addressed. To this end, a dual-season study was conducted using the LWD hyper-susceptible maize hybrid, Megaton cv. The trials were performed in a greenhouse and in the field over full dual-growth seasons (wheat or clover as the winter crop followed by maize as the summer crop). In the greenhouse under LWD stress, the results clearly demonstrate the beneficial effect of maize crop rotation with clover and wheat on plant weight (1.4-fold), height (1.1–1.2-fold) and cob yield (1.8–2.4-fold), especially in the no-till soil. The clover-maize growth sequence excels in reducing disease impact (1.7-fold) and pathogen spread in the host tissues (3-fold). Even though the wheat-maize crop cycle was less effective, it still had better results than the commercial mycorrhizal preparation treatment and the uncultivated non-infected soil. The results were slightly different in the field. The clover-maize rotation also achieved the best growth promotion and disease restraint results (2.6-fold increase in healthy plants), but the maize rotation with wheat showed only minor efficiency. Interestingly, pre-cultivating the soil with clover had better results in no-till soil in both experiments. In contrast, the same procedure with wheat had a better impact when tillage was applied. It may be concluded that crop rotation and soil cultivation can be essential in reducing LWD, but other factors may affect this approach’s benefits in commercial field growth.

Molecular Real-Time PCR Monitoring of Onion Fusarium Basal Rot Chemical Control

“…The inoculation procedure consisted, besides naturally infected soil, three steps of complementary inoculation addition: (1) Pre-seeded soil was infected with sterilized pathogen-inoculated wheat grains, prepared as previously described [ 19 , 20 ]. The soil was infected by blending 20 g of the infected sterilized wheat grains with the soil’s top 10 cm layer; (2) two mycelia colony disks (see Section 2.1 ) from F. oxysporum f. sp.…”

Prevention and Control of Fusarium spp., the Causal Agents of Onion (Allium cepa) Basal Rot

“…The inoculation method consisted of naturally infected soil and complementary infection conducted in three steps to guarantee a high and uniform infection load. First, pre-sowing soil was inoculated with sterilized infected wheat grains that had been prepared as previously described [20,21]. Briefly, the wheat seeds were soaked in tap water overnight, filtered, and dried.…”

Effects of Maize–Crop Rotation on Soil Physicochemical Properties, Enzyme Activities, Microbial Biomass and Microbial Community Structure in Southwest China

“…For example, due to the well-developed rooting action of perennial forage grasses, the organic matter content of some farmland in maize-forage rotations was significantly higher than under monoculture maize cropping patterns [15,16]. Crop rotation can effectively improve soil nutrient content and enzyme activity [17][18][19] and change the diversity and structure of soil microbial communities [20,21] through the impacts of root exudates and crop residues, which are effective at reducing crop succession barriers [22]. One relevant study suggested that bacteria and fungi in soils generally account for more than 90% of all the soil microbial population [23], and some organic matter conversion processes in soils are controlled by soil microbial communities [24][25][26].…”