Nursery Papers – To Dip or not to dip – Foot Baths

Introduction: Nursery hygiene is the most basic platform for ensuring pest and disease-free growing areas and producing the best quality stock for sale to customers. Nursery hygiene issues in the propagation and production phases can cause problems that persist for the lifespan of the plants, which may be several decades in the case of woody species.

Avoiding the introduction of pathogens to the hygiene-critical areas of the nursery is an obvious starting point in planning nursery hygiene protocols, and foot baths are commonly used to help achieve these objectives by preventing unwanted organisms entering nursery spaces. But foot baths should usually be onsidered a last resort, and only form a part of the overall hygiene strategy for any nursery.

System planning and workflow management should be considered before looking at foot baths or other “active” hygiene practices, including simple hand washing or sanitising before handling plants and other nursery materials. Before investing in infrastructure or implementing procedure changes, the best place to start is
by asking questions about specific nursery areas.

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