Potato plants may control potato cyst nematodes. This was decided by the Plantenziektekundige Dienst (the Dutch Plant Protection Service) in March 2006 on the basis of research by Applied Plant Research (PPO). This involved the old idea: use the potato plant as catch crop.
“You plant potatoes in April on an infested field and kill the plant, including roots, after forty days” says PPOs Leendert Molendijk. The dormancy of the nematodes will be broken in those forty days and they have lost their food source before they can reproduce. Field experiments showed that this may decrease the number of nematodes in a field by eighty per cent. The new control method can be used to make infested fields free from nematodes earlier.
Source: Wageningen Update