Mineral nutrition of vegetable crops. LXVIII: malnutrition symptoms in asparagus

Abstract

Young asparagus plants (Asparagus officinalis cv. Mary Washington) were transferred from field to pots containing pure fine quartz. The pots were irrigated several times a day with Hoagland & Arnon nutritive solutions lacking one of the following elements N, P, K, Ca, Mg, S and B at time. Once the symptoms became visible the plants were harvested dried and analyzed for the element. The authors concluded: 1) The visual identification of the deficiencies were unclean and difficult; 2) The omission of the element affected with severity the growth of the plants; 3) Healthy and malnutrition plants presented the following concentration in the leaves: N% 2.20 - 2.93, 1.22 - 1.36; P% 0.10 - 0.20, 0.07 - 0.09; K% 2.95 - 3-11, 0.39 - 0.75; Ca% 0.67 - 0.98, 0.04 - 0.18; Mg% 0.76-1.35, 0.05 - 0.15; S% 0.16 - 0.18, 0.08 - 0.10; B ppm 81.6 108.3, 12.3 - 12.6.