Linking Soil Management, Pest Management and Crop Health

This project is providing agroecosystem management strategies to optimize management of soil organic matter, nutrient cycling processes, pest management and crop health. In previous work, it has been shown that, under controlled situations, crops grown under long term organic management had resistance to certain insect pests, and that this finding was related to soil biological and chemical characteristics.

This process was described in terms of biological buffering by Dr. Larry Phelan and indicates that a sustained influx of organic matter to soils provides a resource base for soil biological communities that then regulate the balance of plant available nutrients in ways that optimize between plant growth and quality, and defense against pests.

In order to expand on this concept, we are investigating the relationships between soil organic matter quantity and quality, soil nutrient availability, insect pests and weed ecology on a range of farms with varying soil management histories, replicated field experiments with differing crop rotation patterns and a series of greenhouse experiments.

In a similar and related study, and as an example of collaboration between a department wide and interdisciplinary program effort, The Department of Entomology at OARDC is developing an initiative that is investigating the impacts of soil management on crop growth and quality, and susceptibility to insect pests. This project represents a novel and comprehensive approach to understanding the ecology of plant health. The work will connect the ecology of soils, plants and insect physiology, using molecular level analyses.  As an initial experiment, we are using the responses of tomato to growth under organic and conventional soil management conditions.

Contact Larry Phelan, phelan.2@osu.edu   for more information.