Abstract
Boron presents a challenge to agronomists. Management of boron in soil is made difficult by its high mobility, being easily leached under high rainfall conditions, leading to deficiencies in plants that grow there. Under low rainfall conditions, the opposite is often true, that it is not sufficiently leached and therefore may accumulate to levels that become toxic to plant growth. This is often exacerbated by irrigation to compensate for the low rainfall, because of the high boron concentrations that characterise many irrigation waters. As will be discussed in more detail in this paper, it is also the nutrient for which the plant has the least control over uptake. All essential plant nutrients except boron are acquired as ionised solutes (except perhaps N supplied as urea), which limits their membrane permeability, and allows a high degree of control by the activation, induction or repression of membrane transporters. To use the vernacular, boron is a ‘slippery customer’ which understand its physiology, agronomic attempts to improve plant performance on B-deficient and B-toxic soils, and molecular attempts to engineer plants that are able to tame boron.
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Reid, R. (2007). Physiology and Metabalism of Boron in Plants. In: XU, F., et al. Advances in Plant and Animal Boron Nutrition. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5382-5_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5382-5_7
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