The impact of tillage and fertilization on wheat grain infection with Fusarium spp

Various soil tillage systems leave different amount of plant residue on the soil surface and have different effects on diseases. Since many plant pathogens can survive on plant debris the soil tillage system affect the amount of inoculum. The aim of our research was to determine the impact of tillage and nitrogen fertilization treatments on the occurrence of Fusarium species on the wheat grain. The field experiment was set at the Magadenovac site from September 2013 to June 2014, having five variants of tillage (CT - conventional tillage treatment, SS - subsoiling, DH- disk harowing, CH - chiseling and NT - no-till treatment) treatments and three variants of nitrogen fertilization treatments (N1 – amount reduced by 50% according recommendation ; N2 – according to standard recommendation and N3 – amount increased by 50% according recommendation). The presence of Fusarium species was determined in all tested variants of tillage and fertilization treatments. During the fertilization with reduced amount of nitrogen, the infection with Fusarium species was statistically reduced in comparison with other nitrogen treatments in almost all variants of tillage treatments (CT, DH and NT). During the fertilization that had an increased amount of nitrogen, the greatest number of grain infection was determined in the disk harowing and subsoiling variants.