One Easy Change Can Double Soil’s “Good Guys”
By Chad Hutchinson, Ph.D.
Global Director Potato Research and Market Support
(Sponsored) We’ve always known Strike works. Season after season, growers tell us what they see in their fields: healthier plants, better root systems, and stronger yields.
But for a long time, the question lingered—what’s happening beneath the surface? Not just in terms of pest control, but in the living biology of the soil itself?
Those questions didn’t come from skeptics alone. It came from the people who believe in the product and wanted to understand why it works. So, we dug in — literally. In one trial over four full crop rotations, we’ve been working with a grower in New Brunswick to look at the long-term impacts of Strike (chloropicrin) on soil biology. What we found didn’t surprise us — but it sure helped prove the point.
The trial was straightforward: two fields, one grower, two treatments: no fumigant or Strike. Each fall before potatoes were planted, the farmer applied treatments. Then we assessed (via a whole lot of comprehensive soil sampling), exactly what was going on in the soil from a microbial perspective.
The results were pretty remarkable.
At Site One, after three cycles of Strike, the presence of beneficial microbes like Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Trichoderma and Streptomyces jumped from 5 percent to nearly 14.5 percent of the total DNA in the soil. At Site Two, which has now been treated with Strike four times, those same beneficials rose from about 4 percent to 11.5 percent.
Zoom in on individual species and the picture gets even clearer: a 2.5-times increase in Trichoderma, nearly five-times in Bacillus, and a staggering 31-times increase in beneficial Pseudomonas at Site Two.
These are not just “nice to have” organisms. They’re known for boosting root growth, suppressing disease, and improving plant resilience.
Meanwhile a similar study has taken place at Oregon State, except that instead of a two-year potato-oat rotation like in New Brunswick, the trial was on continuous potato production, with no rotational crops. In that more intense crop production system, trial results show beneficial organisms, like the ones described above, made up seven percent of all DNA in both non-treated and metam sodium-treated soil but doubled to 14 percent in Strike-treated soil.
At the ecosystem level, the presence of Actinobacteria and Ascomycota — widely recognized as signs of mature, connected soil networks — held steady or improved under Strike.
For years, people have asked me, “Doesn’t Strike sterilize the soil?” In fact, exactly the opposite. Strike isn’t just about pest control. It’s about making space for biology that works for the crop.
For more information visit www.strikefumigants.com or send me an email at: [email protected].
STRIKE™ is a Federally Restricted Use Pesticide.
This article was originally published by Spud Smart.
