Deficiencies of minor elements responsible for diseases of crop plants in this Province

Abstract

Crop plants remove considerable amounts of mineral from the sol during their life.A small percentage of these may be returned to the soil by the disintegration of those parts left in the soil.But the major proporation contain- ed in stem,leaves,fruits and seeds does not come back at least to the same place.Consepuently replenishment of the loss is necessary.For this purpose manures have to be applied to the cropped areas.Knowledge of the nutrit - ional requirements of plants have undergone change in recent years.At one time it was thought that the plants were in need of only ten essential elements for growth.Recent work especially during the last three decad- - s has however resulted in the development of our knowledge of the part part played by various other elements in the life of the plants and has led to the addition of more elements under this category.These latter additions are usually termed as"minor elements" "trace element "or "micronutrients"and have been found to be equally essential though they are required only in extemely small quantities.Though the role of these elements fall within the realm of physiological studies,the absence or deficiencies of these lements lead to the development of pathological symptoms of crop plants and these are of considerable interest to the plant pathologist Further - more there is more information of the pathological aspect of these trace elements than their pgysiological functions.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.194989

Pages

488 - 493

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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