Dynamic relationships between soil properties and foliar disease as affected by annual additions of organic amendment to a sandy-soil vegetable production system

Additions of organic amendments to agricultural soils can lead to improved soil quality and reduced severity of crop diseases. However, the relationship between disease severity and soil properties as affected by repeated additions of these amendments is poorly understood. The primary objectives of this study were to (i) resolve multivariate relationships between soil properties and foliar disease severity and (ii) identify soil properties that contribute to disease severity in an intensive irrigated vegetable production system receiving annual additions of fresh and composted paper mill residuals (PMR). Foliar diseases caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae on snap bean (bacterial brown spot) and P. s. pv. lachrymans on cucumber (angular leaf spot) are the focus of this report. The experiment consisted of a 3-year crop rotation of potato (1998 and 2001), snap bean (1999 and 2002), and cucumber (2000). Treatments included a non-amended fertilizer control and two rates of fresh PMR, PMR composted alone (PMRC), and PMR composted with bark (PMRB). Soil measures included total soil carbon (TC) and nitrogen (TN), particulate organic matter carbon (POMC) and nitrogen (POMN), volumetric soil moisture (VM) and in situ NO3-N. Multiple regression (MR) and principal component analyses (PCA) were conducted to identify key soil properties that influenced the amount of disease. On average, the amount of TC in plots amended with PMR composts increased 77-178% from 1999 to 2002 compared to the non-amended soils. In 1999, a year in which compost additions reduced the amount of bacterial brown spot of bean, TC explained 42% of the total variation in disease severity in the best MR model. Midseason TN alone was inversely related to angular leaf spot incidence in 2000, while POMN explained 51% of the variation in the best MR model for that year. In 2002, a year in which PMRC-amended soils exacerbated brown spot symptoms, midseason quantities of TN explained 80% of the variation in disease severity. Unique to 2002, NO3-N alone positively correlated with disease severity. Overall, the influence of soil carbon on disease severity was displaced by the increasing importance of TN and NO3-N, indicating a transition from a C-dependent to an N-dependent system.