This week’s podcast, sponsored by Bio Till Cover Crops, features Bob Larkin, a plant pathologist with USDA ARS based in Maine. Larkin will discuss which soilborne diseases are impacted by cover crops, which cover crop species are better at mitigating soilborne diseases, how geography affects how cover crops work against soilborne diseases, and more.

Some cover crops, coupled with soil solarization, can control soil-borne diseases in nursery field production of woody ornamentals, according to the results of a Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE)-funded Tennessee State University study. Through a $15,000 SSARE On-Farm Research Grant, Fulya Baysal-Gurel of TSU’s Otis L. Floyd Nursery Research Center, and her colleagues assessed the effects of certain cover crops that belonged to the Brassicaceae family on soil-borne pathogen Phytophthora nicotianae in boxwoods. Read more in this article from SARE.