Micronutrients and their diverse role in agricultural crops: advances and future prospective

Abstract

In plant sciences, the prodigious significance of micronutrient is unavoidable since plant relies primarily on micronutrient as it has profound influence on array of plant activities. Although micronutrients are abundantly present in the soil but plants usually acquire them in relatively trace amounts; hence, regarded as tracer element. B, Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn are such micronutrients required in minute amounts by plants but inexorably play an eminent role in plant growth and development. Plant metabolism, nutrient regulation, reproductive growth, chlorophyll synthesis, production of carbohydrates, fruit and seed development, etc., are such effective functions performed by micronutrients. These tracer elements when present at adequate level, elevate the healthy growth in plant physiological, biochemical and metabolic characteristics while their deficiency promotes abnormal growth in plants. Prevalence of micronutrient deficiency has become more common in recent years and the rate of their reduction has further been increased by the perpetual demands of modern crop cultivars, high soil erosion, etc. On the basis of present existing condition, it is not difficult to conclude that, the regular increment of micronutrient deficiency will be mostly responsible for the remarkable degradation in substantiality of agricultural crops somewhere in near future and so that this issue has now been the subject of intensified research among the breeder, ingenuities and expertise of science. These micronutrients can also be proven toxic when present at accelerated concentrations and such toxicity level endangers the plant growth. Taking this into consideration, the current review unfolds the phenomenal participation of micronutrients in plant sciences and gives a brief overview of the current understanding of main features concerning several micronutrient acquisitions in agricultural crop plants.

Water Extract from Straw Biochar Used for Plant Growth Promotion: An Initial Test

“…Micronutrients also improve the metabolism of carbohydrate, protein, auxin, and pollen formation by being a structural constituent of photosynthetic proteins and enzyme (Marschner 1995;Kumar et al 2015). Because there are many different organic compounds in biochar aqueous extracts, some of the cationic elements present in the extracts may be complexed with organic species .…”

Acquisition and Homeostasis of Iron in Higher Plants and Their Probable Role in Abiotic Stress Tolerance

“…Among the remedies for abiotic stress, nutrient regulations or management are considered as the cost effective and eco-friendly techniques Yadav et al, 2016). It has been reported that plant nutrients (micro and macro) play important roles in growth and development (White and Brown, 2010;Waraich et al, 2011;Tripathi et al, 2014Tripathi et al, , 2015. Therefore, an adequate and balanced supply of nutrients at the correct time is required for the proper growth and development of plants, maintenance of better soil fertility, and preservation of an intensive cropping system to maintain the global food production, particularly in developing countries (Dordas, 2009;Hansch and Mendel, 2009;Sarwar et al, 2010;Moharana et al, 2012;Waraich et al, 2012).…”

The dual benefit of a dominant mutation in Arabidopsis IRON DEFICIENCY TOLERANT1 for iron biofortification and heavy metal phytoremediation

“…Due to the diverse nature of soil, concentrations of micronutrients and heavy metals can vary substantially (Tripathi et al, 2015). Under Fe-limiting conditions, the broad substrate-specific Fe transporter iron-regulated transporter1 (IRT1) is responsible for the uptake of mineral pollutants such as Cd, Ni, Cu, Zn as well as Fe (Al Khateeb and Al-Qwasemeh, 2014;Morrissey and Guerinot, 2009).…”