Mineral nutrition of oxygen-stressed crops and its relationship to some physiological responses (Chapter 35)

Historically nutritional studies of anoxic plants have simply catalogued concentration and uptake changes of treated plants, frequently on a non-partitioned whole-plant basis. Major reviews of soil aeration and flooding generally agree that N, P, and K concentrations in plants are reduced by anoxia (Kozlowski, 1984; Glinski and Stepniewski, 1985). Sodium concentration increases and other major elements either remain unaffected or react irregularly. Until recent years explanations of nutritional changes have focused chiefly on alterations in the poorly aerated soil physicochemical environment. Factors such as: increased mineral solubilization, leaching, and dilution in high water content soils, increased water film coverage of roots, altered ion diffusion, solubility changes at altered valence states, altered pH resulting from redox reactions or increased CO2 concentrations, etc. have been used to explain nutritional responses to oxygen-limiting soil environments.