Some Aspects of Soil Fungistasis

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Abstract
A series of fungi with varying degrees of sensitivity of soil fungistasis was selected as the result of agar disk and buried-slide tests with 17 fungi and one soil. Six out of 7 different soils exhibited a spectrum of inhibition of the test series of fungi similar to that of the first soil tested. The exception was a very acid raw humus soil which only inhibited the acid-sensitive fungus Acrostalagmus cinnabarinus. Fertilizer treatments of two series of plots at Rothamsted were found to affect soil fungistasis only through their influence on soil pH. Inhibitory effect decreased with increasing soil acidity, being absent from the most acid plot tested. From the results of experiments in which three fungi were pre-incubated before exposure to the influence of soil, it is suggested that spores are most sensitive to soil fungistasis at an early stage in the process of germination.