Balanced nutrition

1. Presentation
on
Balance nutri

2. WHAT IS PLANT NUTRITION ?
Plants use inorganic minerals for nutrition, whether
grown in the field or in a container. Complex interactions
involving weathering of rock minerals, decaying organic
matter, animals, and microbes take place to form
inorganic minerals in soil. Roots absorb mineral
nutrients as ions in soil water.
Nutrition: The supply and absorption of chemical
compounds needed for growth and metabolism of an
organism

3. Balance Plant Nutrition
BPN is an integrated approach to meet the
nutritional needs of the crop throughout its life-
cycle. The focus of BPN is the sustainability of the
agro-system. It encompasses the basics of nutrient
management and nutrient balancing based on crop
type, soil type and stage of plant growth to ensure
optimal crop-soil-environment health. BPN does
not stop at administering the BIG 3 (Nitrogen,
Phosphorus and Potassium), but also incorporates
the use of secondary nutrients, micronutrients and
organic manures.

4. Concept of Balanced Plant Nutrition
The concept of balanced nutrition is very simple and
was in fact developed more than 150 years ago. The
idea is that a crop requires an adequate supply
of all nutrients for optimum growth. If more than one is
in short supply, growth is determined by the nutrient
which is in lowest supply. This is similar to the fact that
a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

5. Advantage of BPN
• Optimizes quantitative as well as qualitative yields.
• Maximizes cost: benefit ratio.
• Avoids wastefulness of applied agro-inputs (better
utilization of N, P, K).
• Avoids nutrient antagonisms in soil and plant systems.
• Lowers incidence of plant deficiencies, toxicities and
"hidden hunger".
• Produces normal or near-normal crop even under poor
soil conditions.
• Maintains a clean and productive soil.
• Renders the plant competent by increasing its
immunity to stress and pest attack.
• Reduces environmental hazards.

6. Criteria of Essentiality of Nutrients
This concept was propounded by Arnon and Stout
(1939) and they considered 16 elements essential
for plant nutrition. For an element be regarded as
an essential nutrient, it must satisfy the following
criteria.
1. A deficiency of an essential nutrient element
makes it impossible for the plant to complete
the vegetative or reproductive stage of its life
cycle.

7. 2. deficiency of an element is very specific to the
element in question and deficiency can be
corrected /prevented only by supplying that
particular element.
3. The element must directly be involved in the
nutrition and metabolism of the plant and have a
direct influence on plant apart from its possible
effects in correcting some micro-biological or
chemical conditions of the soil or other culture
medium.

8. Essential Nutrients
An essential nutrient element is the one which is
required for the normal life cycle of an organism
and where functions cannot be substituted by any
other chemical compound.
Plants absorb or utilize more than 90 nutrient
elements from the soil and other sources during
their growth and development and about 64
nutrients have been identified in plants by their
tissue analysis.

9. Plants must obtain the following mineral nutrients from
their growing medium-
The macronutrients:
nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca),
sulphur (S), magnesium (Mg); and
The micronutrients (or trace minerals):
boron (B), chlorine (Cl), manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), zinc
(Zn), copper (Cu), molybdenum (Mo), nickel (Ni).
Of these element C,H,O together constitute 95-96% (C-45%,
O-45%,H-6%). Subsequently N, P and K constitute 2.7% in
plants. The other elements constitute only 1.3-1.4%. But all
have definite roles to play in the growth and development.

10. Classification of essential nutrients
Based on relative utilization or absorption by the plants-
A. Macro or Major Nutrients
B. Micro nutrients
A. Further Macronutrients are classified into two types
1. Primary Nutrient: Nitrogen, Phosphorus and
Potassium. These three elements are also called
as fertilizer elements.
2. Secondary Nutrients: Calcium, Magnesium and Sulphur.

11. B. Micronutrients
The nutrients which are required by plants in relatively
smaller quantities for their growth and development,
but these are equally important and essential to plants
as macronutrients. They are also called as
trace/rare/nano elements.
These include Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, B, Mo, Cl and Ni.