Soil Fertility and Nutrient management (1+1)

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.
  2. The 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.