Soil solarization as a sustainable solution to control tomato Pseudomonads infections in greenhouses

Abstract

The reduction or phase-out of soil fumigants according to European directives has led to a re-evaluation of sustainable heat-based techniques and exploiting solar energy, e.g., solarization that was used successfully for the eradication of fungi, weeds, and nematodes. Since the beginning of the current century, bacterial infections caused by phytopathogenic Pseudomonads have been increasingly reported as threat for many horticultural crops worldwide. Nowadays, this disease represents a limiting factor for the tomato production in the Mediterranean basin under greenhouse conditions. Therefore, we tested the effects of soil solarization in controlling natural infections caused by Pseudomonas fluorescens on tomato cultivations in Sicily (south Italy) from 2010 to 2013 under different greenhouse conditions, i.e., with lateral openings uncovered or kept closed. Four experiments were performed under both wooden-concrete and steel-made greenhouses to compare the performances of innovative and traditional films alone or combined with other control measures (only in partially opened greenhouses) against tomato bacterial infections. All solarization treatments were effective in controlling phytopathogenic pseudomonads except for one carried out in a multi-span steel greenhouse with the side openings kept raised. Tested greenhouse covering and mulching films increased soil temperature up to 9.6°C at 15 cm and 7.7°C at 30 cm, respectively, if compared to bare plots. Moreover, solarization treatments proved effective in controlling bacterial infections (up to about 90% reduction of disease amount) and in increasing yield up to 45% relative to the bare plots. Among tested films, EVA showed the best performances both in reducing bacterial infections and increasing tomato yield, innovative polyamide VIF and smoky gray were very promising films while green coextruded could be considered a very attractive film since it can be left on after solarization process as mulch for tomato transplanting. This study shows for the first time the feasibility and sustainability of soil solarization performed with innovative materials in managing tomato bacterial diseases in greenhouse.

Solar heating to inactivate thermal-sensitive pathogenic microorganisms in vehicles: application to COVID-19

“…Apart from using chemical disinfectants, researchers recently explored alternative methods for disinfecting items potentially contaminated by the novel coronavirus, including ultraviolet irradiation (Zhao et al 2020), ozonation (Blanchard et al 2020) and electrical heating (Oh et al 2020). As Nature's biocide, solar radiation disinfects microorganisms via heat and ultraviolet radiation (Castello et al 2017). Since ancient times, these benefits have been exploited by humankind for water sanitation (Rijal and Fujioka 2001) and more recently for pollutant degradation (Mecha and Chollom 2020; Mousset and Dionysiou 2020) and green synthesis (Patel et al 2020;Srivastava et al 2020).…”

“…In agronomy, soil solarization has been used for the inactivation of pathogens and weeds by placing plastic films on moist soils when the ambient temperature is high. Direct thermal inactivation is thought to be the principal mechanism in such process (Addabbo et al 2010;Castello et al 2017). During the current pandemic, solar-based disinfection has the potential to be utilized as a convenient passive approach for inactivating SARS-CoV-2 in large enclosed objects with complex interior structures that may be particularly challenging for performing chemical disinfection.…”

Gobi agriculture: an innovative farming system that increases energy and water use efficiencies. A review

“…Procedures for making substrates at local sites include: (a) from crop straw to fermentation to the final substrate product, and (b) the potential reuse of the substrate after restoration of the nutrient content light utilization (Cuce et al 2016). Use of solar energy for greenhouse crop production has made progress in many areas/countries (Farjana et al 2018), including Australia, Japan (Cossu et al 2017), Israel (Castello et al 2017), and Germany (Schmidt et al 2012), as well as developing countries such as Nepal (Fuller and Zahnd 2012) and India (Tiwari et al 2016). In China, the installation of modern solar modules is expensive at present, with an estimated payback period of 9 years (Wang et al 2017).…”

The Performance of the DES Sensor for Estimating Soil Bulk Density under the Effect of Different Agronomic Practices

“…Wu et al [37] and Wang et al [38] stated that mulching applications are significantly influenced by an increase in the soil temperature through a thermal transfer between the ambient surroundings and the soil. For example, the soil temperature is considerably influenced by the color and number of layers of mulch [39,40]. Moreover, as other authors have recently demonstrated, the application of catch crops, straw mulches, or plastics reduces the soil erosion rate by several orders of magnitude [41,42].…”