A Cost-Effective Approach for Combining Nematicides, Starter Fertilizers, and Plant Growth Regulators in order to Create a Sustainable Management System for the Southern Root-Knot Nematode, Meloidogyne incognita

In Alabama, the southern root-knot nematode (RKN), Meloidogyne incognita, ranks second in importance to cotton producers behind the reniform nematode, Rotylenchulus reniformis. Corn is a host to RKN but not reniform, making management of RKN in cotton-corn rotation systems extremely important. Cultural management of RKN can be very difficult due to its wide host range, and Kirkpatrick and Sasser (1984) discovered that corn planted for two years followed by cotton can maintain comparable population density to that of a cotton monoculture. Producers may not be willing to deploy control options for RKN in corn due to the relatively low price of corn and myths that the corn root system is too large to be affected by RKN. The objective of this research is to develop an alternative economical management strategy for RKN that combines nematicides with starter fertilizers and plant growth regulators with goals of increasing plant health and limiting RKN reproduction. This research was performed in field studies over a two-year span (2016-2017) at PBU in Tallassee, AL and at BARU in Brewton, AL.