Plants’ Essential Elements

1. Plants’ Essential Elements Macro and Micronutrients

2. MACRO-required in relatively large amounts MICRO-required in small amounts, minor or trace elements Nutrients

3. Macro: non-mineral elements • Carbon (C) • Hydrogen (H) • Oxygen (O)

4. Macro: primary nutrients • Nitrogen (N) • Phosphorus (P) • Potassium (K)

5. Macro: secondary nutrients • Calcium (Ca) • Magnesium (Mg) • Sulfur (S)

6. Micronutrients • Iron (Fe) • Copper (Cu) • Zinc (Zn) • Boron (B) • Molybdenum (Mo) • Manganese (Mn) • Chlorine (Cl)

7. Nitrogen • Promotes growth of leaves and stems • Gives dark green color and improves quality of foliage • Necessary to develop cell proteins and chlorophyll

8. Nitrogen • Deficiency noted when leaves are a sick, yellow-green color • Short stems, small leaves, pale colored leaves and flowers • Slow and dwarfed plant growth

9. Phosphorus • Stimulates early formation and growth of roots • Provides fast and vigorous growth and speeds maturity • Stimulates flowering and seed development

10. Phosphorus • Symptoms of deficiency include slow maturity • Older leaves are a purplish color • Decrease in growth

11. Potassium • Used to form carbohydrates and proteins • Formation and transfer of starches, sugars, and oils • Increases disease resistance, vigor, and hardiness

12. Potassium • Deficiency symptoms include mottled, spotted, streaked or curled leaves • Scorched, burned, dead leaf tips and margins

13. Calcium • Improves plant vigor • Influences intake and synthesis of other plant nutrients • Important part of cell walls

14. Calcium • Symptoms of deficiency include small developing leaves, wrinkled older leaves • Dead stem tips

15. Magnesium • Influences the intake of other essential nutrients • Helps make fats • Assists in translocation of phosphorus and fats

16. Magnesium • Deficiency symptoms include interveinal chlorosis-yellowing of leaves between green veins • Leaf tips curl or cup upward • Slender, weak stems

17. Sulfur • Promotes root growth and vigorous vegetative growth • Essential to protein formation

18. Sulfur • Deficiency symptoms include young leaves are light green with lighter colored veins • Yellow leaves and stunted growth

19. Iron • Essential for chlorophyll production • Helps carry electrons to mix oxygen with other elements

20. Iron • Deficiency symptoms include mottled and interveinal chlorosis in young leaves • Stunted growth and slender, short stems

21. Copper • Helps in the use of iron • Helps respiration

22. Copper • Deficiency symptoms include young leaves are small and permanently wilted • Multiple bud at stem tips

23. Zinc • Helps plant metabolism function • Helps form growth hormones • Aids in reproduction

24. Zinc • Deficiency includes retarded growth between nodes (rosetted) • New leaves are thick and small • Spotted between veins, discolored veins

25. Boron • Affects water absorption by roots • Translocation of sugars

26. Boron • Deficiency symptoms include short, thick stem tips • Young leaves of terminal buds are light green at base • Leaves become twisted and die

27. Manganese • Aids in plant metabolism • Helps in nitrogen transformation

28. Manganese • Deficiency symptoms include interveinal chlorosis • Young leaves die

29. Molybdenum • Aids in plant development • Reproduction

30. Molybdenum • Deficiency symptoms include stunted growth • Yellow leaves, upward curling leaves • Leaf margin burn

31. Chlorine • Essential to some plant processes • Acts in enzyme systems

32. Chlorine • Usually there are more problems with too much chlorine or toxicity than with deficiency

33. Deficiency

35. Assignment • Use the page with the little leaves • Cut out one leaf per nutrient • Color the leaf to match the appearance of deficiency for each nutrient • Past next to the nutrient on your chart