Soil solarization: a safe, affective and practicable technique for the control of soil born fungi and nematodes.

A technique i.e., Soil Solarization and Amendments (neem, chicken farmyard manure, farmyard manure and biokhad viz synthetic bio fertilizer), towards the natural cropping system has been evaluated for its effectiveness and practicability at the National Agricultural Research Center Islamabad Pakistan. Soil solarization and amendments were analyzed as a control measure against soil born fungi and nematodes. Eight weeks of solarization resulted in about 11 degrees C increase in the soil temperature. This increase in soil temperature caused a reduction of about 70 to 80% in the fungal population and about 99% in nematode population at various depths. Neem and Biokhad amendments were proved synergistic for solarization and also improved the properties of soil in the benefit of crop plants. Fusarium sp., Macrophomina phyaseolina and Verticillium sp. of fungi and Tylenchus sp., Haplolaimus sp., Xiphenema sp. and almost all of the parasitic nematodes were significantly (p<0.01) controlled. It was found that even after 40 days the solarized plots contain significantly less number of fungi and nematodes as compared to the nonsolarized plots, which confirmed the durability of this process.