Effect of Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation on Tuber Vitality of Yellow Nutsedge ( Cyperus esculentus )

Jeroen Feys (), Dirk Reheul, Wolf De Smet, Shana Clercx, Sander Palmans, Gert Van de Ven and Benny De Cauwer
Additional contact information
Jeroen Feys: Weed Science Unit, Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Dirk Reheul: Weed Science Unit, Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Wolf De Smet: Weed Science Unit, Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium
Shana Clercx: Educational Research Center (PVL), 3950 Bocholt, Belgium
Sander Palmans: Educational Research Center (PVL), 3950 Bocholt, Belgium
Gert Van de Ven: Hooibeekhoeve, 2440 Geel, Belgium
Benny De Cauwer: Weed Science Unit, Department of Plants and Crops, Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, 9000 Gent, Belgium

Agriculture, 2023, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-21

Abstract: Cyperus esculentus is considered the sixteenth worst weed in the world. The weed causes huge losses in arable crops. Current control strategies are based on combinations of chemical and mechanical methods, repeated over years, and aim to deplete the belowground bud bank. However, this is a slow process. Anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) using readily decomposable carbon sources may be a promising innovative method to quickly deplete the bud bank. This study investigated the effect of ASD with fresh grass clippings (dosage of 80 tonnes ha −1 ) differing in C:N ratio and Herbie ® (consists of organic by-products from the food processing industry, dosage of 25 tonnes ha −1 ) on the vitality of small and large C. esculentus tubers buried at three depths (5, 15, and 30 cm) into two soils differing in soil type and soil moisture content. Their effects were compared with the effect of chemical soil disinfestation (CSD) with metam-sodium (153 kg ha −1 ). ASD with Herbie ® showed at least equal performance compared with CSD with metam-sodium, with reductions in tuber vitality up to 97.5%. The performance of ASD with grass clippings was less consistent across soils and was affected by the C:N ratio of the grass. Both ASD and CSD showed the highest performance in moist, sandy soil and on small tubers. ASD is an effective and promising method to quickly deplete the C. esculentus bud bank, provided that the soil is sandy and moist, the carbon source has a C:N ratio of about 10, and the incorporation depth is at least 25 cm. To foster the implementation of ASD, future research should evaluate its performance consistency across environments and years.

Keywords: mother tuber; biological weed control; soil disinfestation; fermentation; soil moisture content; soil texture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/8/1547/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/13/8/1547/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:13:y:2023:i:8:p:1547-:d:1209377

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().