Nutrients and their impact on healthy plant growth – B is for Boron

Thursday, 1 February, 2018
Johnathan Grieve
Avondale’s holistic BioLOGIC® approach ensures that we pay attention to the full spectrum of macro- and micro-nutrients involved in healthy plant nutrition. In the Periodic Table, nature has a rich palette of elements that it rather delicately draws on to achieve fertile soils and healthy plant growth and over the next couple of posts I will be focusing on one element at a time.

In our new series of posts focusing on the Biochemical Sequence, we’ll be starting with boron represented as “B” in the Periodic Table. A fertile soil requires just a subtle trace of boron; and yet its slight presence is absolutely vital to drive a complex sequence of biochemical events that is fundamental for strong plant and fruit development.

Boron is easily leached out of agricultural soils due to heavy irrigation, lack of humus and low Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) levels. More importantly both nitrogen and potassium are antagonistic towards boron in the soil, so with conventional focus on these nutrients it leads to issues. Many farmers are unaware of the role that boron plays in plant growth.

So, why is boron so important?

Boron creates sap pressure and without sap pressure you have limited nutrient uptake of any sort.
Boron is also a calcium synergist and thus greatly influences the healthy uptake of calcium by the plant. As calcium is commonly referred to as the trucker of all minerals, boron is your steering wheel and without it you’re going nowhere.

Without boron, healthy plant growth can’t make a start.

This is why, at Avondale, we test for the optimal presence of boron in our soils, and if necessary, we supplement our soils with natural sources of boron. We prefer to supply this via the soil because the boron is primarily responsible for sap flow up from the soil and specifically in the roots’ xylem. This can be applied in foliar feeds during the growing season but more as a band aid and not the first choice.

Silica will be the next topic in this series of posts.

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Biochemical Sequence 1
Biochemical Sequence 1

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