and Prospects to Reduce the Inoculum Potential of the Fungus in the Soil

Verticillium dahliae causes a wilting disease in strawberries and is very destructive on the light, sandy soils prevailing in many Austrian strawberry regions. Our work aims at the testing and providing diff erent strategies to control Verticillium in the fi eld: 1) a soil test to check the presence of microsclerotia before planting; 2) testing new, Verticillium tolerant early season varieties as alternative to ‘Elsanta ’ and 3) testing measures to reduce the microsclerotia content in the soil. Th e paper describes a fi eld monitoring to study the factors that infl uence the relationship between inoculum concentration in the soil and the disease incidence in the fi eld, and on-farm biofumigation trials aiming at testing the applicability of the method to reduce the microsclerotia of Verticillium dahliae in the soil. Key words soil-borne pathogens, wilt, strawberry, Brassica juncea, biofumigatio