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Vermicompost use for plant nutrient management
Suppression of plant disease with vermicompost
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Project collaborators and funding

 

 

 

 

Wormpower Open House, October 7,2010 from Philip Wilde/Ann Michel on Vimeo.

Welcome to Cornell University’s vermicompost research page. The short 9-minute film “Vermicompost: a Living Soil Amendment” is a general introduction to the vermicomposting process as a technology that transforms organic wastes into resources and the uses of vermicompost for plant nutrient management and the suppression of plant diseases. The film can be viewed streaming (YouTube below) and the higher resolution version is available as a free download. More detailed reports from a series of studies carried out at Cornell in the Departments of Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology and Horticulture are linked below. Teaching resources and links to other vermicompost related sites are also included.

 

A 3-minute version of this video "Vermicompost and Pythium Suppression" won the Grand Prize in the American Phytopathological Society's Office of Public Relations and Outreach 2010 contest (click here) and second prize in the ChloroFilms plant video contest (click here).

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFGQR5ERaPQ

Video can also be downloaded here.

Our project team found limited benefits associated with direct soil applications of vermicompost. However, we did find that vermicompost can be an important component of potting media for producing vegetable transplants without synthetic fertilizers. Temperature is a significant factor in the performance of potting media containing vermicompost and we investigated optimal temperature ranges for a variety of vegetable crops. We found that vermicompost from a specific facility protects cucumbers from Pythium aphanidermatum, a seed-infecting pathogen. Through an ongoing project, we’re investigating the microbial mechanisms that prevent infection from occurring to increase our understanding of the biological control of plant diseases. 

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