PROVIDE™ is a commercial microbial inoculant used to enhance phosphate (P) uptake by crop plants. It can be easily applied to wheat on-farm up to 15 days before planting. It can be applied to canola seed by commercial seed treaters and will survive on seed in 25 kg bags for at least six weeks under normal warehouse conditions.

The effect of NH4NO3 on the expression of take-all in wheat and on the ability of fluorescent pseudomonad bacteria to decrease the growth of the pathogen and the symptoms of the disease was examined in a nitrogen-deficient acidic soil from Western Australia. Application of NH4NO3 increased the fresh weight of shoots, decreased root weight and length, and offset some of the deleterious effects of infection. Inoculation with Gaeumannomyces graminis var. triciti reduced shoot weight and root weight and length at all but the highest level of applied nitrogen. Fluorescent pseudomonads applied to wheat seed (at approximately 108 colony-forming units/seed) reduced seed germination and failed to reduce the severity of take-all expressed as weight or length of shoots or N content. Although the density of black runner hyphae of G. graminis var. triciti was reduced at 40 days and the proportion of root colonized by the pathogen was lower at 28 days with bacterization under severe nitrogen deficiency, no effect of the bacteria was observed if N was added. Key words: Gaeumannomyces graminis var. triciti, fluorescent pseudomonads, wheat, nitrogen.

SUMMARY Sclerotia of Sclerotium cepivorum buried in muck soil in the Fraser Valley decayed with time. The rate of decay of sclerotia was influenced by local environmental conditions. A mixture of soil with sclerotia increased their survival but there was no difference in the rates of decay in three different soils. The decay was greatest during winter when Fraser Valley fields are often flooded. Sclerotial decay was also affected by pretreatment of the sclerotia. Dried sclerotia decayed significantly ( P < 0.05) faster than sclerotia which had not been dried, a phenomenon which is apparently due to changes in micro‐organisms on the sclerotia. Dried sclerotia which had been incubated in moist soil had fewer bacteria and more fungi than sclerotia which had been incubated in soil without being dried. The increase in fungi on the dried sclerotia was due to a dramatic increase in Trichoderma spp.