Nutritional role of calcium in plants

Summary

Studies, using the sugar beet as a non-leguminous crop in the Imperial and San Joaquin Valleys of California, have shown by soil tests, measured crop yields, and the storage of the disaccharide sugar in the root, that calcium is a plant nutrient deficient in these desert soils.

It was demonstrated by trials over three years that the drilling in seed contact of a natural gypsiferous mineral, known in commerce as „mineralag”, gave decided improvement in the crops as increasing stands and root yields on the neutral and alkaline soils under cooperative supervision of the Holly Sugar Corporation of tests by Geyser Minerals Corp., Denver, Colorado.

It was established that these desert soils with organic matter contents of barely one per cent, or less, a pH of 8.0 and higher, and of excesses of other cations above standard percentages saturation of exchange capacities, the slight variations in applications of nitrogeneous, phosphatic and mixed fertilizers in conjunction with calcium, can represent imbalanced plant nutrition as shown by reduced concentrations of the disaccharide sugar in the beet root. The absence, in near total, of both the soil organic matter and the hydrogen cation, or acidity, show clearly how badly unbuffered these soils are to be ‘physiologically shocked’ by more ‘salt’ applications in fertilizers.

Accordingly, when so poorly buffered, the excesses of the other cations, namely, magnesium (possibly the most disturbing), potassium and sodium beyond adsorption potentials to be active as salts, are serious disturbers to any attempt to balance plant nutrition for higher, or controlled sugar concentrations, along with higher beet yields.

These studies recognize the need to consider the balance of the cationic fertility as a factor pointing to the concentration of the disaccharide sugar as well as to the tonnage yields of roots. These studies point to the need to consider the quality, first, along with the quantity of the crop as guides for wisest soil management.