Title : Soil available nutrients and nutritional food quality of crops
Abstract:
Nutritious food is essential to meet the dietary needs for healthy human life. Continuous crop production can reduce nutrient reserve in the soil. As reserves get depleted crop growth and productivity can be compromised, over time, cumulative depletion candecrease crop yields, food quality and soil health. Hence, an adequate supply of plant nutrients is essential insoils for crop production and nutritional food quality. An integral approach recognize that soils are the store house of most of the plant nutrients essential for plant growth and that the way in which nutrients are managed will have a major impact on crop yields, nutritional food quality and soil health. The addition of N generally has the greatest effect on plant growth and also considerable influence on food quality, especially through increase in protein content and its quality. The major P- containing compounds that are important for crop quality are phosphate esters, phytin and phospholipids. K is very closely associated with crop quality. It improves the quality of several products including tubers, fruits and vegetables. Adequate supplies of Ca prevent a number of crop quality problems, such as inner decay of cabbage, brown spot and bitter kit in apples and empty shells in groundnuts. A good supply of Mg increases the concentration of carbohydrates and also chlorophyll. An adequate supply of S improves: oil percentage in oil seeds and grain sizes, seed protein content in pulses and grain sizes, flour quality for milling and baking, marketability of copra, quality of tobacco, nutritive value of forage, starch content in tubers, head size in cauliflower and sugar content and sugar recovery in sugarcane. Micronutrients are involved in many metabolic process, their adequate supply is a precondition for good food quality, especially with respect to the concentrations of proteins and vitamins. Soil health for adequate supply of nutrients will be discussed for ensuring nutritional food quality of crops to sustained human health.
