The Decade of the 1980s for Iron Nutrition and Interactions in Plants

As a result of a display of interdisciplinary interest on Fe at an international symposium on trace elements at UCLA in 1979, a symposium was sponsored on Fe by the Benson Institute at Brigham Young Univ., Provo, Utah, in 1981., The 82 papers were published in the Journal of Plant Nutrition (Vol. 5, 1982). Disciplines represented included horticulture, agronomy, genetics, soil science, plant breeding, plant physiology, plant biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, plant pathology, and animal science. Four equally successful -symposia followed: Logan, Utah (1983), with 78 papers in the Journal of Plant Nutrition (vol. 7, 1984); Lincoln, Neb. (1985), with 71 papers in the Journal of Plant Nutrition (vol. 9, 1984); Albuquerque, N.M. (1987), with 90 papers in the Journal of Plant Nutrition (vol. 11, 1988); Jerusalem, Israel (1989), with 80 papers to appear in Plant and Soil, and also in a symposium book. In July 1991, the sixth meeting will be held in Logan, at Utah State Univ., with Gene W. Miller of the Biology Dept as general chairman. More progress was perhaps made in the 1980s on understanding and management of Fe chlorosis m plants than during the previous 150 years since it became known that Fe deficiency was involved in the chlorosis. For many years, there was a general attitude that Fe chlorosis was almost impossible to correct or too expensive to do so and extremely difficult to understand. Even the advances made with metal chelates in the 1950s and 1960s did little to change these attitudes. Now, new tools are available to cope with Fe chlorosis. In the 1980s, a solid foundation was prepared for use of plant breeding and biotechnology to develop plant cultivars with improved resistance to Fe chlorosis. A more complete, but as yet not full, understanding