Apple replant disease: the influence of soil phosphorus and other factors on the growth responses of apple seedlings to soil fumigation with chloropicrin

The effects of fumigating field soils before replanting apple are frequently predicted from bioassays where apple seedlings are grown in pots, some containing untreated soil and the others containing chloropicrin-fumigated soil. The results from 418 such bioassays made during eight years are discussed with reference to the effects of certain physical and chemical soil features. Soil phosphorus (P) content and pH had large effects on growth in fumigated (but not untreated) soils; they therefore had large effects on the growth response to soil fumigation. There were no indications of important effects due to soil content of potassium or magnesium or to soil texture. In fumigated soils, the height of seedlings was generally greater, the greater the soil P content, but in untreated soils it was mostly independent of P (range 1 – 156 mg P litre^-1soil). The differing effects of native P on growth in untreated or fumigated soils were attributed respectively to the presence and absence of vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhizas: their absence in fumigated soils was considered (for apple) to be an artefact in the seedling bioassay. The results for untreated soils indicated that the apple mycorrhizal system was very efficient in retrieving P when there was little available. Growth responses to soil fumigation were usually greater in acidic than in alkaline soils for any given level of P. When soils were P-amended before testing, the effects of native P and pH virtually disappeared and the proportion of orchard soils with economically significant growth responses increased from 39% to 67%.