Management of plant parasitic nematodes (PPNs), soil-borne diseases, and weeds in the strawberry industry is fundamental for every North Carolina grower, to achieve a successful production season. The prohibition of methyl bromide (MBr) in 2005 caused significant challenges for growers leading to the search for new and efficient strategies to suppress and control the impact of pests and diseases that affect strawberry growers. Hence, the objective of this project was to evaluate alternative fumigation strategies combined with new bed architectures for the control of soil-borne pests in strawberry production. Two experiments were conducted in North Carolina where, compact beds (24 inches wide by 12 inches tall) were compared to traditional North Carolina strawberry beds (30 inches wide by 6 inches tall). Both bed architecture designs were fumigated with either shank or drip-applied fumigants (Pic-Clor 60 and Pic-Clor 60 EC, respectively), with and without the inclusion of a soil surfactant for the drip fumigation treatments. In both studies, we measured strawberry plant biomass, volumetric water content in multiple points of the planting beds, plant parasitic nematodes (PPNs) and weed pressure before and after fumigation, plant reflectance indexes, bed compaction, and crop yield. Post-treatment results demonstrated that compact beds with both shank and drip-applied fumigants achieved comparable control of weeds and PPNs to traditional beds with shank fumigation. Bed compaction measures indicated that compact bed treatments present less compaction at 4-, 8- and 12-inch depths compared to the higher compaction observed in North Carolina’s traditional strawberry beds.
