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Thumb of Michigan | https://nematode.unl.edu/wormgen.htm
Dr. George Bird at Michigan State said at a meeting many years ago that a handful of healthy soil will hold approximately 1200 different species of Nematodes. Out of those, there are potentially 200 species that may be negative to a growing cash crop. But that depends on what the crop is: we don't care much (for example) about a nematode thats negative to cotton production here in Michigan. Same thing with a sugar beet cyst nematode present in Georgia. Not much of an issue.
Still a lot of misconceptions and misunderstanding about nematodes in general. Crop production would be almost impossible without some nematode species.
Back a few years ago, there was a few species of Oilseed Radish imported here from Europe. They were found and developed to be a trigger for Sugar Beet Cyst nematodes to come out of diapause, fooling them into thinking there was a host crop planted. In this case, sugar beets. And they work well for that. There are some other neat benefits to them, but as far as I've ever been able to find out, some varieties were able to control sugar beet cyst nematodes when planted at the correct population in the correct growing period. I thought at one time I read about research into whether those varieties also being negative to "good" nematodes, but I can't find it now.
What ended up happening a few years down the road was that there were a few people selling an oilseed radish variety that was unrelated to the varieties that would control sugar beet cyst nematodes: in fact, some of these varieties could actually act as a host to them according to some nematologists. Very counterproductive if you're growing sugar beets, but fortunately, the sugar companies here anyway had enough research to point out the incorrect varieties. No harm, no foul really. Except, there were more than a couple folks claiming that those same oilseed radish varsities would control all your nematodes, especially soybean cyst nematodes. Which, far as I know, was never proven. I'd asked a couple people making those claims to provide data showing soybean cyst nematode control with any oilseed radish, and to date I haven't received in FWIW. And, the last thing in the world anyone should want to do is control all the nematodes. Which wasn't going to happen anyway of course.
Anyway, I think that we're just in the infancy of being able to breed a cover crop or propagate an insect (for example) that can help control a problem in crop production. Not in my lifetime, but hopefully my kids, there will be a lot more findings of things such as what the OP posted. Here anyway, just finding out what habitat Carabid Beetles prefer and how to increase their populations field wide will be a pretty ground breaking development.
Edited by pat-michigan 4/7/2024 17:39
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Anyone using nematodes for rootworm control
