ASD WEED MANAGE - ANAEROBIC SOIL DISINFESTATION WEED MANAGEMENT FOR A SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION TO ORGANIC SPECIALTY CROP PRODUCTION

Weeds are among the major factors limiting yield in organic vegetable and other horticultural crop systems and their management is particularly challenging in organic crops. The lack of effective biological weed management solutions is a major obstacle to the adoption of organic farming practices and represents a key limitation to the expansion of the industry despite the continuous growth of the U.S. organic market.Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation (ASD) is emerging as a broad-spectrum biological soil treatment for the management of soilborne pests and pathogens, including weeds. Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation also known as Biological Soil Disinfestation is a microbial-driven process based on the use of organic amendments.Integrated a series of research and extension activities, the primary goal of this project is to increase the profitability and sustainability of organic vegetable and other specialty crop production systems and to facilitate the transition from conventional to organic production practices by optimizing and integrating the use of Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation as a biological weed management tactic in specialty crops systems, while promoting soil health.Coordinated research activities and on-farm demonstration trials will be conducted to optimize and integrate Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation into organic specialty crop systems and evaluate the efficacy of ASD in suppressing key weed species in Florida and Pennsylvania, two states representative of the U.S. Northeast and Southeast regions.Besides assessing the efficacy of Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation in suppressing specific weeds, the project will allow us to investigate the impact of ASD on the soil-plant nutrient dynamics and investigate the mechanism of suppression examining the impact of the treatment on the soil microbiome. To ensure the viability of ASD we will assess its economic sustainability and will assess any obstacle to the adoption of this new biological solution. The research-based knowledge generated through the project on ASD will be disseminated via local, regional, and national level Extension activities (on-farm demonstrations, field days, presentations at growers' meetings, in-service training, seminars, webinars), along with the publication of educational material (fact-sheets, newsletters, magazine, and research articles), contributing to the transfer of ASD principals and practical application to organic specialty crop growers as a sustainable weed management strategy.