Mineral Nutrition BT - Plant Physiological Ecology

Abstract

Next to water, nutrients are the environmental factor that most strongly constrains terrestrial productivity. The productivity of virtually all natural ecosystems, even arid ecosystems, responds to addition of one or more nutrients, indicating widespread nutrient limitation. Species differ widely in their capacity to acquire nutrients from soil. Some plants can take up Fe, P, or other ions from a calcareous soil from which others cannot extract enough nutrients to persist.