Plants’ Essential Elements
description
Transcript of Plants’ Essential Elements
Plants’ Essential Elements
Macro and Micronutrients
Nutrients
• MACRO-required in relatively large amounts
• MICRO-required in small amounts, minor or trace elements
Macro: non-mineral elements
• Carbon (C)• Hydrogen (H)• Oxygen (O)
Macro: primary nutrients
• Nitrogen (N)• Phosphorus (P)• Potassium (K)
Macro: secondary nutrients
• Calcium (Ca)• Magnesium (Mg)• Sulfur (S)
Micronutrients
• Iron (Fe)• Copper (Cu)• Zinc (Zn)• Boron (B)• Molybdenum (Mo)• Manganese (Mn)• Chlorine (Cl)
Nitrogen
• Promotes growth of leaves and stems
• Gives dark green color and improves quality of foliage
• Necessary to develop cell proteins and chlorophyll
Nitrogen
• Deficiency noted when leaves are a sick, yellow-green color
• Short stems, small leaves, pale colored leaves and flowers
• Slow and dwarfed plant growth
Phosphorus
• Stimulates early formation and growth of roots
• Provides fast and vigorous growth and speeds maturity
• Stimulates flowering and seed development
Phosphorus
• Symptoms of deficiency include slow maturity
• Older leaves are a purplish color
• Decrease in growth
Potassium
• Used to form carbohydrates and proteins
• Formation and transfer of starches, sugars, and oils
• Increases disease resistance, vigor, and hardiness
Potassium
• Deficiency symptoms include mottled, spotted, streaked or curled leaves
• Scorched, burned, dead leaf tips and margins
Calcium
• Improves plant vigor• Influences intake and
synthesis of other plant nutrients
• Important part of cell walls
Calcium
• Symptoms of deficiency include small developing leaves, wrinkled older leaves
• Dead stem tips
Magnesium
• Influences the intake of other essential nutrients
• Helps make fats• Assists in
translocation of phosphorus and fats
Magnesium
• Deficiency symptoms include interveinal chlorosis-yellowing of leaves between green veins
• Leaf tips curl or cup upward
• Slender, weak stems
Sulfur
• Promotes root growth and vigorous vegetative growth
• Essential to protein formation
Sulfur
• Deficiency symptoms include young leaves are light green with lighter colored veins
• Yellow leaves and stunted growth
Iron
• Essential for chlorophyll production
• Helps carry electrons to mix oxygen with other elements
Iron
• Deficiency symptoms include mottled and interveinal chlorosis in young leaves
• Stunted growth and slender, short stems
Copper
• Helps in the use of iron
• Helps respiration
Copper
• Deficiency symptoms include young leaves are small and permanently wilted
• Multiple bud at stem tips
Zinc
• Helps plant metabolism function
• Helps form growth hormones
• Aids in reproduction
Zinc
• Deficiency includes retarded growth between nodes (rosetted)
• New leaves are thick and small
• Spotted between veins, discolored veins
Boron
• Affects water absorption by roots
• Translocation of sugars
Boron
• Deficiency symptoms include short, thick stem tips
• Young leaves of terminal buds are light green at base
• Leaves become twisted and die
Manganese
• Aids in plant metabolism
• Helps in nitrogen transformation
Manganese
• Deficiency symptoms include interveinal chlorosis
• Young leaves die
Molybdenum
• Aids in plant development
• Reproduction
Molybdenum
• Deficiency symptoms include stunted growth
• Yellow leaves, upward curling leaves
• Leaf margin burn
Chlorine
• Essential to some plant processes
• Acts in enzyme systems
Chlorine
• Usually there are more problems with too much chlorine or toxicity than with deficiency
Macro and Micro Nutrients
• Remember:
• C Ca Fe HOPKiNS Managed By My Cuzin MoCo ClZn