I am working on boron deficiency in Indian mustard.
During screening of different mustard genotypes I found the plants did not show any symptoms of boron deficiency, for a prolonged period, when I transferred directly to 1X Hoagland's after germination.
But when I slowly increase the nutrient concentration (from 1/4th, 1/2 and then to 1X), as mentioned in Xu et al 2012, the plants started to show symptoms respective to the Boron deficiency.
So then I got these questions:
1. As we all know plant's nutrient requirement depends and vary upon their developmental stage. Is that possible that excess concentration of nutrients (1X Hoagland's immediately after germination) hindered the deficiency symptoms of Boron?
2. Moreover, I found the survival rate of the seedlings were much better when I increase the nutrient concentration from 1/4th, 1/2 and then to 1X Hoagland's. Any explanation for this?
Boron is an essential micronutrient which is needed by in low quantities. Researchers suggest the sweet area between sufficiency and toxicity is narrow for Boron compared to other micronutrients. For plants grown from soil 1 ppm is sufficient and over 2 ppm in the soil test can be into a toxic range. Boron can leach out of some laboratory glassware with can make the boron response difficult to assess. Make certain your lab ware has no ability to supply boron. Plants in the crucifer family are quite susceptible to boron deficiency and a typical expression is hollow heart symptom which is a blasting and necrosis of the stem center. Calcium and boron metabolism is connected with the joining of cell walls together. To assess boron you will need to make sure you have a no boron treatment and that levels of boron are provided with other nutrients being at optimized levels. My experience is that many soils have low boron levels. If you are in a tropical environment papaya fruit is good bioindicator of boron deficiency and the susceptible fruits will show bumps or bulges the bumpy fruit condition. If you are constrained by these conditions foliar boron applications at critical stages can be very efficacious.
I have attached a pdf on the inter relationship of boron and calcium in ginger issues in Big Island of Hawaii. If calcium is at 1% or higher and the foliar boron is 100 ppm it should be an optimization of calcium and boron to prevent the cell blasting in the rhizome bud apical sites. In the case of tomatoes the blossom end rot is stimulated by ammonium but not nitrate thus indicating the nutrient interactions are very important related to nutrition issues.
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