Soil fumigation with Chloropicrin enhances strawberry yields by controlling harmful pathogens and promoting beneficial microbes.
Effective Fumigation for Strawberries
Soil Fumigation has worked hand-in-hand with strawberry farmers for over 50 years to produce large, healthy yields of ripe, delicious strawberries.
Douglas Ag usually recommends fumigation for strawberry fields because the long, profitable growing seasons leave little time for the soil to recuperate between plantings. This means that the many different soil-borne pathogens inhabit the soil for many, many generations of strawberry plants and they thrive without a thorough treatment that soil fumigation with Chloropicrin provides.
Research with Chloropicrin products has shown that while they do shift the soil microbial composition, often they are simply reducing the abundance from harmful organisms and allowing beneficial organisms to thrive.
Additionally, Chloropicrin is able to promote levels of beneficial microbes like Trichoderma, Bacilius, and Pseudomonas. These microbes are important in root formation.
You can see evidence of this in this Apple trial that was done over the course of 2 years in Eau Claire, MI in this graph.