Relationship between soil properties and incidence of pine wilt disease at stand level

This study was conducted to evaluate and compare soil properties between pine stands either damaged or undamaged by pine wilt disease in Jinju and Sacheon Cities, which are areas in Korea severely affected by the disease. Soil physical and chemical properties were generally similar between damaged and undamaged pine stands. There was no significant difference in soil factors related to soil nutrient fertility between damaged and undamaged pine stands, although the incidence of pine wilt disease was affected by soil clay content, which was significantly (P < 0.05) higher in the damaged (24.8%) than in the undamaged (20.1%) pine stands. However, this relationship should be treated with caution because small scale topographical variation may simply reflect the incidence of pine wilt disease. The results suggest that incidence of pine wilt disease was not influenced by soil nutrient properties at a small stand scale.