The effects of short-term biosolarization using mature compost and industrial tomato waste amendments on the generation and persistence of biocidal soil conditions and subsequent tomato growth Achmon, Yigal Sade, Nir Rubio Wilhelmi, María del Mar Fernández Bayo, Jesús Dionisio Harrold, Duff R. Stapleton, James J. VanderGheynst, Jean S. Blumwald, Eduardo Simmons, Christopher W. Biosolarization Chemical fumigation Volatile Fatty Acids This work was funded by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (14-PML-R004) and the National Science Foundation (CBET-1438694). Additional support was provided by the Will W. Lester Endowment from the University of California, Davis. Conventional solarization and biosolarization with mature compost and tomato processing residue amendments were compared with respect to generation of pesticidal conditions and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plant growth in treated soils. Soil oxygen depletion was examined as a response that has previously not been measured across multiple depths during biosolarization. For biosolarized soil, volatile fatty acids were found to accumulate concurrent with oxygen depletion, and the magnitude of these changes varied by soil depth. Two consecutive years of experimentation showed varying dissipation of volatile fatty acids from biosolarized soils post-treatment. When residual volatile fatty acids were detected in the biosolarized soil, fruit yield did not significantly differ from plants grown in solarized soil. However, when there was no residual volatile fatty acids in the soil at the time of planting, plants grown in biosolarized soil showed a significantly greater vegetation amount, fruit quantity, and fruit ripening than those of plants grown in solarized soil. 2026-02-11T08:55:03Z 2026-02-11T08:55:03Z 2018-05-15 journal article Achmon Y, Sade N, Wilhelmi MdMR, Fernández-Bayo JD, Harrold DR, Stapleton JJ, VanderGheynst JS, Blumwald E and Simmons CW. (2018) The effects of short-term biosolarization using mature compost and industrial tomato waste amendments on the generation and persistence of biocidal soil conditions and subsequent tomato growth. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Vol. 66, 5451−5461. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jafc.8b00424 0021-8561 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/110856 10.1021/acs.jafc.8b00424 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ embargoed access Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License ACS Publications