Quote:
Originally Posted by greentiger87
No, compared to innoculating your transplants, soaking the ground with with Trichoderma spores is a waste of time and effort. There's a certain psychological satisfaction to "disinfecting" the soil before you ever plant anything - but in this case, it's not rational. The literature consistently shows that introducing the spores to the root system just before transplant is the most effective (actually, I can't think of any good examples where soil soaking with a wilt control organisms had anything but marginal success).
Fusarium and Verticillium spores are incredibly persistent and hardy. They are rarely parasitized by other fungi under normal conditions.
Another possibility to look into is "anaerobic soil disinfestation". The active organisms in this process are most likely Clostridium species and other organic acid producers.
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I've read the same thing, even though Trichoderma are free living, they do their best work at pathogen suppression in the rhizosphere. Like other beneficial soil organisms they provide multiple benefits to the plant. Other than mycoparisitism of pathogenic fungi, some Trichoderma will penetrate the root cells and induce system resistance in the plant, they produce the plant growth hormone indole acetic acid (IAA), and there appears to be synergy with other organisms like mycorrhizae and yeasts.