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Effect of Silicon on Crop Growth, Yield and Quality

  • Chapter
Silicon in Agriculture

Abstract

Silicon (Si) has widely been reported to increase the growth and biomass, yield and quality of a broad range of crops including monocotyledonous crops such as rice, wheat, maize, barley, millet, sorghum and sugarcane that actively take up and accumulate high amounts of Si in their organs and some dicotyledonous crops such as cotton and some vegetable and fruit crops. The yield increment, however, may be attributable not only to the beneficial effects of Si including growth promotion, lodging resistance and biotic and abiotic stress resistance but also to some indirect effects such as pH adjustment and acquisition of macro- and micronutrients contained in the silicate fertilizers, especially when slags or Si-containing mineral ores are used as sources of silicate fertilizer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Yongchao Liang

  2. Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yongchao Liang & Alin Song

  3. University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

    Miroslav Nikolic

  4. Laval University, Québec, Canada

    Richard Bélanger

  5. Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China

    Haijun Gong

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  5. Alin Song
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Liang, Y., Nikolic, M., Bélanger, R., Gong, H., Song, A. (2015). Effect of Silicon on Crop Growth, Yield and Quality. In: Silicon in Agriculture. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9978-2_11

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