Effect of some crop management practices on reproduction of Meloidogyne javanica in Brassica napus

The effects of seed treatments with pesticides, soil temperature at sowing, cutting of plants with and without glyphosate herbicide, root disruption and age of crop at inoculation on reproduction of Meloidogyne javanica on Brassica napus were investigated. When inoculated at sowing, plants grown from fodder rape cv. Rangi seed treated with fenamiphos (0.35 g a.i. per 100 g) and from fodder swede cv. Highlander seed with a coating including imidacloprid had fewer galls than plants from seed untreated or treated with omethoate (0.7 g a.i. per 100 g). When nematode inoculation was delayed until 4 weeks after sowing, omethoate and the imadacloprid treatments had no effect while fenamiphos (0.7 g a.i. per 100 g seed) suppressed galling but also impaired seedling emergence and induced chlorosis. Green manure rape plants cvs Rangi and Humus transplanted into infested soil in the field in mid-autumn (soil temperature 17°C) remained nematode and gall-free, but tomato cv. Grosse Lisse plants were heavily galled. All three cultivars were gall-free when transplanted and grown in early winter (soil temperatures 8-14°C). Cutting off the tops of cv. Rangi plants at from 6 to 11 weeks after sowing and inoculation had no effect on egg production compared to that on intact plants. Predominant nematode stages in cut plants ranged from developing juveniles to egg-laying females. Application of glyphosate to freshly cut stems had no effect on egg production at any stage. Infesting soil with roots of cv. Rangi, finely chopped while nematodes in them were still juveniles, resulted in a low incidence of infection of bioassay tomato plants compared with infesting soil with rape roots chopped later, when females and females with eggs predominated. Young females in tomato roots laid eggs despite fine chopping of the roots. When cv. Rangi plants were inoculated at 3, 5 and 7 weeks after sowing, the 7-week-old plants were the least invaded and fewer eggs were produced on the 5 and 7-week-old plants than on the 3-week-old ones.