VERTICILLIUM
The verticillium fungi jeopardise the cost-effectiveness of strawberry production by causing a wilt disease. Conventional chemical methods to treat the fungus infection in the soil are not available for the food production sector.
A method developed at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) allows the application of not pathogenic subtypes of verticillium in order to immunise the strawberry plants. The method focuses on the control of the composition of microorganisms in the soil, by inoculating a calibrated mixture of apathogenic verticillium subtypes. Tests have proven the effectiveness of the method in grid cell experiments.
