Seasonal variation in leaf damage symptoms, mineral contents, and postharvest attributes of cut foliage of Eucalyptus silver dollar (E. cinerea)

ABSTRACTEucalyptus silver dollar (Eucalyptus cinerea) is cultivated under intensive agronomic practices for production of cut foliage branches for the floriculture industry. A range of damage symptoms, suspected to be related to unoptimized mineral nutrition, routinely occur in the leaves at the production plantations and reduce yield quality. No information is available about the nutritional requirements of Eucalyptus silver dollar, or of any other Eucalyptus species under intense cultivation for cut foliage branches production. In this study we evaluated the hypotheses that: (1) leaf damage symptoms in the Eucalyptus silver dollar plantations might be related to the nutritional status of the leaves; and (2) they are affected by environmental and growing conditions, and will therefore differ between seasons and location of the plantations. To test these hypotheses we studied the seasonal and location variations in the ionomics of damaged and healthy leaves, physiological parameters, and postharvest attri...