There are quite a few plant diseases that cause problems in the substrate and water. When gas is used more sparingly, the crop can become more susceptible to the weak fungus Pythium or more seriously other plant pathogenic fungi and bacteria at a lower temperature. Did you know that when a crop suffers from a virus, the root system often also becomes more susceptible to disease

Storage of water has many preconditions. For underground storage, storage in a basin or in a silo, covered or not. Each form has its advantages and disadvantages. Realize that if you don’t use enough fine filters, more cleaning agent is obviously needed in the water. For example, if rainwater from the basin is not filtered sufficiently first, part of the peroxide in the water will react with the organic material from the rainwater alone. So take a good look at where you can make water better without resources with an extra filter and extra fine filters (25 – 50 mu). Rinsing water from sand and other filters often goes to the waste drain silo. Also make sure that there is at least a fabric filter, and preferably a finer filter afterwards, so that dirt does not enter the silo.

Ensure that water in day supply or clean drain silos does not remain in storage for too long. If the storage is not 100% necessary, leave the maximum level lower. So that it is refreshed more often. Or keep the daily supply at a lower EC so that it is also refreshed more often. This is better for the oxygen level in storage and prevents bacteria and fungi from growing to too high values.

Checking for microbiology in water is often done on the basis of counting bacteria and fungi, the so-called germ counts in colony-forming units per ml. That is counting living micros in water. So even if it is disinfected water or you dose a cleaning agent in the drip water, germ counts indicate the still living micros.

Normec Groen Agro Control developed packages with growers to get even more information from good irrigation water. The sooner you detect increased spore pressure from plant diseases, the better you can react before it becomes too contagious. That is why we have the ‘Gemcount Concentrated’ package for clean irrigation water. That it is suitable for monitoring the plant diseases Fusarium and Pythium/Phytophthora at the lowest level in addition to bacteria and fungi.

Not every system is the same, but here are reference values ​​that apply to bell peppers.

For micros that stimulate resilience balanced analysis, we also have packages that provide insight into the resilience micros. Examples are Fluorescent Pseudomonas, Lactic acid bacteria, Trichoderma spp., Bacillus. Ask for it if you want to rate it.

For more information, please contact Ines van Marrewijk.