The increasing importance of trace elements

Our R&D department participates regularly to seminars and conferences in order to stay up-to-date with the latest developments and knowledge, allowing us to come up with solutions that meet the needs of the market. We would like to share with you some very interesting facts that were presented during the latest seminar of “Akker –en Tuinbouw BLGG AgroXpertus”, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
(cfr Main picture: source: rootsforgrowth.com - IZA)

Decreasing soil fertility
Because of the more rigorous legislation on the use of animal manures and because chemical fertilizers are more pure than ever, a lot less contaminants but also less micro-nutrients were put on the fields the last decennia. Soil analysis done over the last 20 years showed a continuous decrease of the soil fertility. Not only organic matter concentrations go down year after year, but also the availability of phosphorous, sulphur, zinc and boron are decreasing considerably.

Zink deficiency
Zink deficiency is the most widely spread micro-nutrients deficiency on agricultural land (cfr picture 2).

In agriculture we notice that the availability of zinc in most of the soils is decreasing. The main reasons for this are (cfr picture 3):
-    decrease of fertilizers from animal origin
-    reduction in zinc deposits
-    reduction of zinc concentration in phosphorous fertilizers
-    decrease of zinc in animal feeds

The sensitivity to zinc deficiency is very crop dependent. Corn, various fruit trees (pear, citrus, mango, ….), rice, barley, beans, soya, flax, and onion are for example very sensitive to deficiencies. Different BMS Micro-Nutrients products are available to avoid or treat zinc deficiency. First off all there is our pure zinc chelate, Chelal Zn, but also other products rich in zinc can be used: Landamine Zn, Azavis MnZn, Chelal RD, Microlan Zn, Chelal MnZn, Chelal AZ and Hyberol.

Another example: sulphur deposits on agricultural land rapidly decreased thanks to the more severe environmental legislations concerning air quality. If fertilizers do not compensate this reduction, deficiencies become common (cfr picture 4). BMS Micro-Nutrients offers also some products to apply some sulphur foliar: Kappa Z, Fructol.