ISHS Acta Horticulturae 822: VI International Pineapple Symposium
THE EFFECT OF DIFFERENT COVER CROPS ON NEMATODE POPULATIONS AND YIELD IN 'QUEEN' PINEAPPLE CULTIVATION |
| Authors: | E.C. Rabie, H.A. Tustin |
| Keywords: | Ananas comosus var. comosus, green manure, soil management, Pratylenchus brachyurus |
| Abstract:
In ‘Queen’ pineapple cultivation a huge amount of vegetative material is removed as suckers for new plantings and very little is put back into the soil. A standard practice is to leave the land fallow for three years, followed by fumigation with EDB before replanting with pineapples. Later in the season, chemical nematicides are used for nematode control. In this trial, the effect of intercropping with a cover crop to enhance soil fertility and/or control nematodes was determined. Four crops (velvet bean - Macuna sp., dolichos bean - Dolichos sp., cow peas - Vigna sp., sunn hemp - Crotolaria sp.) and a control (fallow) were planted in a randomized block design. After incorporating the green material of each cover crop into the soil, half of each plot was fumigated with EDB. Results showed that fumigated plots performed better than the non-fumigated plots both for yield and nematode control. The sunn hemp + EDB treatment had the highest yield with 73.2 t/ha followed by fallow + EDB with a yield of 71.6 t/ha. In the non-fumigated treatments, fallow produced the highest yields with 49.4 t/ha followed by sunn hemp with 39.1 t/ha. In the non-fumigated treatments, nematode numbers in pineapple plants ranged from 120 nematodes in 10 g roots in the sunn hemp treatment to 2000 nematodes in 10 g roots in dolichos bean treatment, having a direct effect on yield. Only sunn hemp can be considered in a rotation system. Velvet bean that is supposedly resistant to Pratylenchus brachyurus proved to be susceptible and was not able to keep the nematode numbers down in the pineapple crop. | |
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