Delineation of Management Zones for Southern Root-Knot Nematode using Fuzzy Clustering of Terrain and Edaphic Field Characteristics

Management zones (MZs) for southern root-knot nematode (RKN) from the integration of terrain (TR) and edaphic (ED) field features might facilitate variable rate nematicide applications. This study was conducted on 11 coastal plain fields in the USA. The relationships between RKN populations and five soil ED and TR attributes (apparent soil electrical conductivity [shallow (ECa-s) and deep (ECa-d)], elevation (EL), slope (SL), and changes in bare soil reflectance) were analyzed using canonical correlation. Using two ED and TR data sets, canonical predictors were used for zone delineation. Although the results showed that the zones with RKN population above the RKN field average were associated with the lowest values of ECa-s, ECa-d, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and SL with respect to field average values, zone segregation was enough using ECa-s and ECa-d data. The results suggest the potential for using soil properties to identify RKN risk zones.