DISEASES CAUSED BY SOIL-BORNE PATHOGENS - The Epidemiology of Plant Diseases - page 381

conducive to the disease. Intermediate cropping (e.g. growing of a crop between
harvest of the previous cash crop and sowing of the subsequent crop), already
recommended for limiting soil erosion and nitrate leaching, should therefore also be
considered as a way of improving soil health (Ennaïfar et al., 2005).
14.4 CONCLUSION
Soil-borne pathogens are difficult to control with pesticides because it is difficult to
target the niches in which they are found without treating the whole soil profile. Soil
disinfection is no longer acceptable, for environmental reasons, and never was
acceptable for some crops for economic reasons. Most alternative methods are only
partly effective at controlling these diseases, but may act on different phases of the
disease development cycle. As soil-borne diseases often develop more slowly than
air-borne diseases, this provides an opportunity to time actions throughout the crop
cycle, and even between crops, which may be useful given the polyetic characteristic
of these epidemics.
This approach requires accurate description of the processes underlying disease
epidemics, damage and resulting yield losses, comprehensive organisation of these
processes in time and space, identification of the determinants affecting these
processes and the identification of possible ways to control epidemics and minimise
yield losses. Epidemiology and modelling are central to this kind of approach, (i)
describing the behaviour, dynamics and damage of soil-borne pathogens at a range
of ecological scales and (ii) making this information available to farmers and
advisors to enable them to implement integrated crop protection strategies.
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