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Leaf Cares Article – Foliar Analysis

What is Leaf tissue testing?

Leaf tissue testing is a crucial process for evaluating the concentration of essential elements within plant tissue. Essential nutrients, categorised as micronutrients and macronutrients, play key roles in sustaining the plant’s life cycle. Micronutrients, required in smaller amounts and macronutrients needed in larger amounts are essential for achieving optimal plant growth. In current agricultural landscape, where reducing production costs, preserving natural resources, and preventing any unfavourable environmental effects, improved fertilizer management is imperative, effective fertilizer management becomes a cornerstone. To achieve this, understanding of crop nutrient requirements is required as well as the application of soil testing to forecast fertilizer needs. Soil tests provide valuable information about the overall nutrient content of the soil. However, it cannot tell us how much of each nutrient is actually available to the growing plant. Leaf tissue analysis fills this gap by providing direct measurements of nutrient concentrations in the plant tissues.

Leaf tissue analysis, a specialized form of plant analysis, focuses on evaluating the nutrient content and physiological condition of leaves. Leaves, as the primary photosynthetic organs of plants, are directly responsible for absorbing nutrients from the soil and converting them into energy for growth and development. Assessing the nutrient levels in leaves allows for a direct assessment of a plant’s nutritional status.

Given that the plant’s nutrient content varies regularly, appropriate tissue testing is the only certain method that can determine the nutritional requirements of a plant and identify if it is suffering from a nutrient deficiency. The analysis of leaves provides vital information necessary to ensure that the crop has all the nutrients it needs to produce the anticipated yields.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why test plant tissue?

One of the reasons is to monitor the nutrients within the plants during the growing season. This technique is a good management strategy as it helps determine when the best moment is for application is to achieve greater uptake efficiency by the plant, the other reason is to diagnose a suspected nutritional deficiency or toxicity, as toxicities of micronutrients are equally important and can be as yield limiting as deficiencies. It is best to perform this analysis as soon as possible after the symptoms are evident. Once a deficiency manifests itself, the optimum yield may have already been lost. Therefore, routine leaf tissue sampling and analysis at the right time in the season can help to avoid crop losses. With toxicities, information obtained on the current stressed crop can only be used to make management decisions that may benefit subsequent crops. For example, diagnosis of copper toxicity can only be treated by liming the field for the next crop.

How to assess it?

Traditional leaf tissue analysis often involves tedious laboratory procedures, requiring samples to be sent for analysis, often incurring delays and additional costs. To address these limitations, near-infrared (NIR) technology has emerged as a promising alternative. Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is an emerging technique for analysing soil and plant nutrients, where leaf testing is based on the principle that the absorption and reflection of near-infrared light by plant tissues vary depending on their chemical composition, including nutrient levels. This spectroscopy technique, provides rapid, non-destructive, cost-effective, and less labour-intensive analysis of plant nutrients in real time. Using NIRS in combination with accurately built database allows farmers and advisors to directly measure crop nutritional status and apply this information for fertilizer management. Moreover, leaf analysis based on NIRS enables the detection of hidden deficiencies and prevents any excess application of fertilizers. This enables farmers and advisors to be proactive in nutrient management by keeping crop nutrient demand and soil nutrient supply in sync, thereby achieving optimal yields and higher profits, while reducing unnecessary input costs and environmental footprint of agriculture enterprises.

Consequently, plant tissue analysis in combination with soil test information is the recommended approach for diagnosing nutrient deficiencies AgroCares is currently working on the LeafCares solution and will make it available later this year. If you would like to learn more about LeafCares and be the first to test it in the field, please send us a message to info@agrocares.com. (Link to the contact form).

 

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