DESCRIPTION

Healthy soils are of major importance for the future of the European horticultural and agricultural crop production. Especially in intensive production systems, soil borne diseases are a major factor with a negative impact on soil health. Newly developed best practices and sound crop rotations permit to maintain, improve or re-establish soil health in Europe.

The adaptation of optimised crop ro­tation as a basis to prevent build-up of soil borne diseases, which is specific to the needs and situation of each individual grower

With Best4Soil we are building a community of practice network across Europe by inter-connecting growers, advisers, educators and researchers. This network promotes knowledge ready for practice on 4 best practices (compost, green manure, anaerobic disinfestation, (bio) solarisation) for the control of soil borne diseases. Therefore we build a website and organize meetings and events in 20 European countries where we exchange knowledge on soil health with our communities of practice. The main objective of the Best4Soil thematic network is to maintain, improve or re-establish soil health in Europe. We provide open-access databases with information on the range of pathogens and nematodes that affect vegetable, arable and cover crops to help practitioners to build appropriate crop rotations and innovative control strategies.

Innovative control strategies are provided through easily understandable tutorial videos and through factsheets which give more in-depth information. All information is edited in 20 EU languages, will be freely accessible and highly comprehensible to guarantee a smooth knowledge transfer from research to practice.