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On the diversity of nematode antagonists in an agricultural soil, and their steerability by root-knot nematode density and cover crops
Making use of local (microbial) nematode antagonist community could be a means to manage plant-parasitic nematodes. An obvious question would be: do ’normal arable soils’ comprise nematode antagonists, and if so, are they scarce or relatively abundant?
In this paper we performed a field experiment in which we generated multiple levels of the Columbia root-knot nematode Meloidogyne chtiwoodi, and we investigated the effects of plant-parasitic nematode densities as well as cover crops on the local antagonist community.
We found a remarkable diversity of mainly (facultative) nematode antagonists in this experimental field, and we showed that cover crops can affect both the density and the activity of these antagonists.
We also concluded that under these nutrient-rich conditions, most facultative nematode antagonists will live as saprophytes, rather than as nematode antagonists. More insight in the mechanisms that steer life style transitions of these soil microbes will be required to further exploit the local nematode suppressive potential of arable soils.