Tag: plant health

As the world’s food demand grows, agricultural food production is also on the rise. This comes with the related challenges of poor yield, drought, pests and weeds that can negatively impact both productivity and the environment. While fertilizers and pesticides play a significant role in attempting to overcome some of these obstacles, agricultural biologicals can […]

Soil salinity can occur naturally or be caused by human activity – continuously irrigating with water that has a high salt concentration, for example. While some crops are tolerant to saline soils, high concentrations of some salts can be toxic to others. Salinity can also affect a plant’s uptake of water and absorption of nutrients. […]

Calcium (Ca) is the backbone of every living organism, including plants. Although a plant’s needs for calcium can be as high as its needs for nitrogen and potassium, it is classified as a secondary nutrient. In this post, we examine the importance of calcium and the factors that can limit its availability to plants. As […]

It has been over a decade since the discovery of how plants take up and re-translocate silica (Si), one of the most abundant elements on earth. Further focus on the element has revealed that it plays an important role in alleviating the effects of biotic and abiotic stress; however, still much remains to be understood. […]

Of the sixteen nutrients that plants need to grow, develop, reproduce and remain healthy, there are seven that we refer to as micronutrients: zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), boron (B), chloride (Cl) and molybdenum (Mo). While these nutrients are used in minute amounts, they are just as important to plant growth and […]

Plants require a total of 16 nutrients to grow, develop, reproduce and remain healthy. Three of these nutrients – nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) – are required in relatively large amounts. These are known as macronutrients. Existing in a delicate balance with each other, the macronutrients each have a big role to play […]