natural-products-in-plant-pest-management

252 M. Santos et al.teas coat plant surfaces (foliar application) or roots (liquid drench application)with living microorganisms and provide food for beneficial microbes.Plasmopara viticola or downy mildew of grape leaves (Weltzien and Ketterer,1986), Botrytis cinerea or grey mould (Elad and Shtienberg, 1994; Diánez, 2005;Koné et al., 2010), Phytophthora cinnamomi (Hoitink et al., 1977), Fusariumoxysporum f.sp pisi or Fusarium wilt of peas (Khalifa, 1965), Fusarium oxysporumf.sp cucumerinum or Fusarium wilt of cucumber (Ma et al., 1999) Pythiumultimum or damping-off in pea (Pisum sativum) (Tränkner, 1992).Multiple modes of activity are involved in suppressing plant diseasewith NCT, whereas no studies have determined the mechanism involvedwith ACT (Scheuerell and Mahaffee, 2002a). The microbes in compost teascan suppress diseases in several ways: induced resistance, antibiosis andcompetition (Brinton, 1995; Scheuerell and Mahaffee, 2002a), and directdestruction of pathogens structures (Ma et al., 2001).The microbiotic of NCT (Weltzien, 1991) and ACT (Ingham, 2003) hadbeen described as being dominated by bacteria. It is important to know howthe manipulation of the compost tea production process enriches and/orselects for individual microbe populations. Scheuerell and Mahaffee (2002b)studied the use of ACT and NCT produced with and without nutrient additives,to drench peat-perlite growing media that was inoculated withPythium ultimum and planted with cucumber seeds. They used differentnutrient additives, fungal nutrients (soluble kelp, humic acids and rockdust) and bacterial nutrients (molasses-based nutrients solution). The mostconsistent compost tea formula for suppression damping-off in cucumberwas ACT produced with the fungal nutrients, whereas the disease was notsuppressed with ACT produced with the bacterial nutrients and withoutnutrients.12.4 Grape Marc CompostGrape marc is the waste from wine production; once the juice has beenextracted, the skin 7% (w/w), stalks 5% (w/w) and seeds 4% (w/w) are allredundant. In total, 15–20% of wine production is waste, comprising thousandsof tonnes. The amount of marc that is generated from fruit is known tovary for a number of reasons, including whether the grapes have been irrigatedand the type of equipment used to press the grapes (Jordan, 2002).Spanish production of grapes for wine production is near 5 million tonnes;up to 700,000 tonnes of marc is estimated to have been generated throughoutSpain. The marc, if not treated effectively, can cause a number of environmentalhazards ranging from surface and groundwater pollution to foulsmells. In the European Union all by-products of wine production (grapemarc and wine lees) are obliged to be distilled; the legal basis for distillationmeasures in the EU is given in chapter II of title III, Art.27 of regulation (EC)N°1493/1999. In European countries grape marc is first distilled to recoveralcohol, followed by washing for tartrate recovery, then seed separation andfinally the remainder is either burnt for energy recovery or composted along