TRANSIENT NUTRIENT DEFICIENCIES AND THEIR IMPACT ON YIELD – A RATIONALE FOR FOLIAR FERTILIZERS?

In many regions of the world, growers and fertilizer manufacturers recommend the use of foliar fertilization to prevent short term or ‘transient’ deficiencies such as those that may occur during reproductive growth, or periods of peak demand.
The fundamental nutritional physiology to support the use of these fertilizers, however, is scant and generally inadequate to predict or explain the usefulness of these practices.
Over the past 5 years we have conducted considerable research into the unique effectiveness of targeted B fertilization and have observed that foliar B applications frequently increase fruit set and yield if applied during reproductive growth.Biochemical, isotopic and molecular experimentation demonstrate that a transient B deficiency is common during reproductive growth and that B plays a unique but poorly understood role in reproduction.

Whereas this research on B clearly demonstrates that transient nutrient deficiencies occur and have important effects on tree yield, there is inadequate research to verify if transient deficiencies of other elements occur, or to determine if foliar fertilizers are the most efficient method of correction.
Verifying the importance of transient deficiencies would provide a rationale for the use of foliar fertilizers in horticultural, field and row crops, would represent a significant and important research challenge.

IV International Symposium on Mineral Nutrition of Deciduous Fruit Crops

P.H. Brown

Foliar fertilization, boron, deficiency, fertilization, nutrition, tree crops

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2001.564.24