Fighting Golden Potato Nematode

A vegetable crop that is unpretentious for growing, such as potatoes, can grow when watering is scarce. Its various varieties show high yields on problematic soils and in adverse climatic conditions, but they are often not able to withstand pests. Potato nematode causes significant damage to agriculture.

Fight against the golden potato nematode

Appearance pest

Golden Potato Nematode – a small-sized variety of human vei, not more than 1 mm long, which feeds on the juice of potato root crops and causes brown rot on the plant.

Due to its small size, it is possible to consider what a golden pest looks like, only under a microscope. Outwardly this worm with a round-shaped body is round forms in females and a vermiform elongated with a transparent tail in males.

There are 4 species of this pest in nature: potato stem nematode, golden, gall and pale varieties.

Color of a golden female in spring Third Period predominantly white. By the onset of autumn, it darkens and turns brown.On the root system of a potato bush, it is attached by means of the oral cavity and an organ located in it, called a spear. With the same spear, a golden potato nematode cuts through vegetables and moves inside root crops.

What is the danger of the nematode

Agronomists consider the golden potato worm to be one of the most dangerous quarantine pests that cause damage to plants and threatening human health. With the naked eye, it is possible to see its clusters if you dig up an infected potato bush in the period after flowering. Round-shaped tubers, which are females of a golden pest, will be visible on tubers that have been shaken off the ground.

The danger of infection of varieties of vegetable crops is the inability to diagnose infected soil.

Offspring – cysts – retains its activity even during cold winter periods, able to tolerate drought. Propagating with great intensity, the pest can destroy almost the entire potato crop.

Soil infection can occur for up to 6 years due to the phased development of cysts. Without the adoption of timely cleaning methods, soil becomes a pest carrier for a dozen years even without the plants present in it acting as its nutrition.

At the end of winter, the golden potato nematode cysts become a source of the emergence of young individuals who seek out potato tubers and begin to penetrate, settle there and go through their main developmental stages. Sucking out potato juice, they lead to deformation of the leaves and stems of the potato.

Harm from the nematode

Like the Colorado potato beetle, wireworm and other pests that multiply and spread among tubers Potato disease caused by the golden nematode causes significant damage to the future crop, reducing its rates by 30-90%. Among the harm that the pest is capable of causing:

• deterioration in the taste characteristics of vegetables,
• sparse flowering or its complete absence,
• mashing tubers of varieties of potatoes or complete their absence,
• restrictions on the export and sale of grown vegetables in places unfavorable for glauberosis.

Contributing factors

The reason may be a lack of trace elements in the soil

The spread of the golden potato variety and increase in area Di infection contributes to the annual cultivation of vegetable crops on the same landing area and the associated violation of crop rotation.Excessive saturation of the beds with nightshade crops and excessive weediness of the land plot allows the increase in the quantitative composition of the pest.

Reduced watering and the lack of micronutrients in the soil also contribute to its activity.

Symptoms

To recognize that a golden pest has settled on a potato, it is often possible only at a critical stage of the disease. The first signs of the presence of cysts of potato golden nematode will be:

• the appearance of bushes with yellow and sluggish leaves, which have stopped their development, the leaves begin to curl and dry in the lower part of the plant,
• in the affected bushes only 1-3 shoots are formed, shoots are deformed, have a pale color, bushes die before the harvest,
• the root system darkens to brown, begins to lag behind in development and forms numerous root processes.

Methods of destruction

Among m Methods of how and how to deal with potato nematodes are mechanical, biological and chemical. Preventive measures are of no small importance in measures to combat the golden potato nematode.

Mechanical methods

They involve the manual digging of infected potato bushes and their subsequent destruction. Removing the bush from the garden is carried out together with a lump of soil in which cysts have settled.Infected bushes need to be burned or filled with bleach. The dug hole is carefully covered with urea.

Biological methods

Among the main measures that are recommended in the fight against the pest:

• alternating planting of potatoes with plants that have deterrent properties, marigolds, rye, legumes, sweet clover, calendula,
• the soil is populated with predatory insects along with special soil, which provokes the appearance of an earthworm,
• organic fertilizer fertilizers in the spring.

Chemistry

Its use is intended camping in the case of contamination of the bushes. Systemically, nematicides are used for extensive infection of planting areas. These chemicals can accumulate in the plant, causing poisoning of pests. Urea is introduced into the places where infected potato bushes are removed.

Not only bushes, but also seed material are chemically treated. Simultaneously with the preplant treatment of root crops, stimulants are used that make the vegetable crop resistant to pests.

Prevention

Due to the fact that the cause of the appearance of any kind of pest – gold, stem or pale, is the planting of vegetable crops with non-compliance with them cultivation sequence, without proper alternation, a preventative measure against the pest will be regular inspection of potato plantings and removal of bushes with revealed signs of its presence.

Complementing the main control methods in the form of prophylaxis In addition to following the general crop rotation rules, you can:

• plant potato varieties resistant to the nematode,
• process the seed planting material with potassium permanganate, pre-rinse the tubers in heated water,
• burn potato tops and weeds after harvesting, disinfect household equipment with formalin formulations,
• add fertilizing to plants – superphosphate, ash, potassium,
• pre-process the seed before planting potatoes urea area: 1-2 kg per 100-200 sq.m.