Autoradiography of mineral ions in green leaves and flowers, absorbed with and without synthetic fulvic acids

Summary

Autoradiography of green leaves and flowers are presented, after absorption with three kinds of mineral ions: the very common one in nature Na⁺, the toxic CrO₄^2- and the nutritional I^-, labeled with ²²Na, ⁵¹Cr and ¹³¹I respectively, in order to test directly how these ions are distributed in a different way throughout the vegetable tissues, depending whether they are associated or not to synthetic fulvic acids commercially produced as fertilizers in Mexico. Two kinds of Polaroid films have been used and the necessary exposition time for the activity used is one week as a minimum, since these tracers are gamma- and X-rays emitters and, therefore, their action on the film is much weaker than that obtained with beta particles. It has been verified the effect brought about by synthetic fulvic acids, as fertilizers which distribute more evenly mineral ions into vegetable tissues, when they form a complex [I^-], but they act as discriminators in the case of toxic ions [CrO₄^2-] or when they do not form a complex [Na⁺].