BEST4SOIL: SHARING KNOWLEDGE ON PREVENTION AND CONTROL OF SOILBORNE DISEASES

Healthy soils are essential for sustainable horticultural and agricultural crop production. In intensive cropping systems, soilborne diseases are a limiting factor to increased food production. Improved soil management and sound crop rotations will help ameliorate soil health. BEST4SOIL is a European Horizon EIP-AGRI network project which started in 2018 and is due to end this year but project leads have applied for an extension, as some activities were impacted by Covid disruptions.

Best4soil proposes (i) the employment of sound crop rotations to prevent the build-up of soilborne diseases in the first place and (ii) the implementation of four best soil management practices to reduce soilborne disease inoculum levels when issues arise. The project identified the following four as best practices:

• Biosolarisation in hot climes, and with climate change, this practice could be employed in cooler regions of the EU. Biosolarisation can also be used in glasshouses for soil-grown crops
• Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation (ASD)
• Using suitable green manures and cover crops for the specific situation and biofumigant crops to control, e.g. nematodes
• The use of compost and other organic amendments to support a large diversity of macro- and microorganism which will keep crop pathogens in check

 The project has delivered factsheets and videos to help farmers and growers across Europe improve soil health and two easy-to-use freely accessible databases to aid rotational planning. The publications are available in all official languages of the EU. The two databases were built following the same approach used by Wageningen University | Field crops – www.aaltjesschema.nl. 

 Summary points: 

1. Best4soil recommends that all soil practitioners and land-managers employ sound crop rotations and the following best practices to reduce the risks of pathogenic microorganisms and pests damaging their crops – (i) the use of compost, organic amendments; (ii) Choosing suitable green manures / cover crops for the specific situation and biofumigating to control nematodes in particular, where needed; (iii) biosolarisation for pest and disease control, where possible and (iv) anaerobic soil disinfestation (ASD) for high value crops. 

2. Growers and agronomists are encouraged to explore the wealth of videos and factsheets on soil health.  The free to download resources can be found on this page. 

3. Using the Best4soil free-access databases as an aid to rotational planning; to help choose fields with reduced pathogen and nematode risk on the crop of interest.  Full instructions on how to use the databases can be found on the page – Best4Soil - A network of practioners, for sharing knowledge on prevention and reduction of soil borne diseases.  A recording showing how to use the databases is also available.

The nematodes Database is available on https://nematodes.soilhealthtool.eu/en-gb/Nematode-scheme

The pathogens database can be found at https://fungi.soilhealthtool.eu/en-gb/Pathogen-scheme 

4. A number of Best4soil webinars with useful information on soil health are available on You can access them from the Best4soil website. These include

Nematodes – A world to discover

The influence of crop rotation on early dieback and yield in starch potatoes

Control of northern root knot nematode with trap crops

Experiences and trials with clubroot in oilseed rape 

5. If you need help on how to use Best4soil databases contact the UK Country Facilitator Grace Choto at choto@ahdb.org.uk 

The Best4Soil consortium comprises over 20 EU countries and the UK. AHDB are facilitators on the project; our role is to highlight resources from the project to UK farmers and growers. For more details on the project and a demonstration of how to use the databases, contact Grace Choto at grace.choto@ahdb.org.uk.