Correcting micro-nutrient deficiencies in paddy

摘要

Paddy crop in Punjab suffers mainly from the deficiencies of zinc and iron. Zinc deficiencies are confined to the soils having high pH while iron deficiency is a problem of highly permeable light texture soils. Intensive cropping over the past four decades, has depleted the soils of the Punjab of various nutrients. Consequently, the deficiencies of the essential nutrients have been on the rise in the crops grown under varying soil conditions. Seventeen elements are considered essential for plant growth and these are divided in to two groups of macro and micro nutrients, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium , magnesium & sulphur are the macro nutrients and zinc, iron, manganese, copper, molybdenum, boron, chlorine & cobalt are considered as micro nutrients. Micro nutrients are taken up by the plants relatively in less amount than the macro nutrients, however these are as essential as macro nutrients for plant growth and development. Most of the farmers are taking careof the supply of macro nutrients to crops but ignore the micro nutrients thereby resulting in poor yield of the crops under deficient conditions.