Guatemalan Fertilization Project
September 16, 2008
As stated by Ms. Ranade, who runs Micnelf
USA (which is the subsidiary of IMT, the(Institute for Micronutrient
Technology based on Pune-India), the nutrient plant program in not a new
concept, just a poorly understood one. We do not want to provide our farm
friendly Guatemalan grower a fancy method to fix problems quickly but
rather a simple but effective cost solution that is easily
implemented. There are two main concepts of the 5-year nutrition
plant program currently being implemented in Guatemala that I would like
to share with our readers. They are called the plant growth chart and the
Mitscherlich’s curve.
I would
like to share first the plant growth chart with few explanations regarding
its content. The first thing to focus on is learning basic chemistry as
starting point to better understand what is going on inside any plant and
the nutrition plant process itself. I am not an expert and I am not
pretending to become one in this field but good advice is learning basic
stuff first about this topic if we want to understand how it works. The
first thing that I learned was that any plant needs 17 elements to growth
properly, so proper ratios of essentials nutrients might be applied to
each type of crop depending on the growth stage, foliar and soil
analysis.
The chart in the left shows the different types of minerals needed by a plant. Starting from the most common ones on the bottom of the chart, called natural nutrients, C,H,O,Cl which are found by the plant in the surroundings representing 98% of its requirement. The 2% left needed by the plant is classified as major nutrients, secondary nutrients and micronutrients. The last group called micronutrients accounts only for 2% out of the 2% left initially. In other words, just 0.04 units out of the 2 units are needed for any plant in order to survive this is a very tiny part but extremely essential for the plant system build up process.
The second
chart below is called the Mitscherlich’s curve and is important to
understand because it correlates the yield, disease resistant and amount
of fertilizer. The first element to point out is the curve F, which
represents the disease resistance line --- the higher the curve the
better. In addition, there are 5 zones named A,B,C,D, and E. These zones
represent different stages of nutrition level of the plant. For instance,
zone A on gray color indicate that the plant is under low fertilizer
input. The plant itself shows the symptoms. Zone B is called the condition
of hidden hunger. At this stage nutrient inputs are sufficient enough so
that the plant may not show any symptoms but the yield will be reduced.
Zone C This is the part of the curve where every crop should be in. Zone D
This region is called the area of “diminishing return” where
more fertilizer input would not increase the yield. Zone E is
called toxicity range, at this point nutrients inputs exceed the normal
amount fertilizer inputs so plants react negatively by dying.
Finally, if the growers follow the advice of the agronomist and technicians that understand in depth how the plant nutrition works and apply the right products in the correct dosage, the outputs would show up in terms of yield, quality of the product and disease resistance.
I would
like to share first the plant growth chart with few explanations regarding
its content. The first thing to focus on is learning basic chemistry as
starting point to better understand what is going on inside any plant and
the nutrition plant process itself. I am not an expert and I am not
pretending to become one in this field but good advice is learning basic
stuff first about this topic if we want to understand how it works. The
first thing that I learned was that any plant needs 17 elements to growth
properly, so proper ratios of essentials nutrients might be applied to
each type of crop depending on the growth stage, foliar and soil
analysis. The chart in the left shows the different types of minerals needed by a plant. Starting from the most common ones on the bottom of the chart, called natural nutrients, C,H,O,Cl which are found by the plant in the surroundings representing 98% of its requirement. The 2% left needed by the plant is classified as major nutrients, secondary nutrients and micronutrients. The last group called micronutrients accounts only for 2% out of the 2% left initially. In other words, just 0.04 units out of the 2 units are needed for any plant in order to survive this is a very tiny part but extremely essential for the plant system build up process.
The second
chart below is called the Mitscherlich’s curve and is important to
understand because it correlates the yield, disease resistant and amount
of fertilizer. The first element to point out is the curve F, which
represents the disease resistance line --- the higher the curve the
better. In addition, there are 5 zones named A,B,C,D, and E. These zones
represent different stages of nutrition level of the plant. For instance,
zone A on gray color indicate that the plant is under low fertilizer
input. The plant itself shows the symptoms. Zone B is called the condition
of hidden hunger. At this stage nutrient inputs are sufficient enough so
that the plant may not show any symptoms but the yield will be reduced.
Zone C This is the part of the curve where every crop should be in. Zone D
This region is called the area of “diminishing return” where
more fertilizer input would not increase the yield. Zone E is
called toxicity range, at this point nutrients inputs exceed the normal
amount fertilizer inputs so plants react negatively by dying. Finally, if the growers follow the advice of the agronomist and technicians that understand in depth how the plant nutrition works and apply the right products in the correct dosage, the outputs would show up in terms of yield, quality of the product and disease resistance.
