How Fertilizers Affect The Quality Of The Crop -1

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Pouring apple, crispy carrots …

The main purpose of the cultivation of agricultural crops in suburban areas is to obtain a high yield of fruits, berries or vegetable products. Now gardeners and vegetable growers are paying more and more attention not only to the quantity of products grown, but also to their quality.

However, this task is more difficult than just growing a crop. Therefore, it deserves a separate and independent consideration. First, let's talk about general, theoretical directions, so that later you can better understand the practical techniques for managing product quality, so that every gardener and vegetable grower can do it himself at his dacha.

The quality of agricultural products, like the harvest, is a quantitative indicator. It can be measured, and in some cases seen. The quality, firstly, is the biochemical composition of the crop, that is, the content in the crop of proteins, fats, starch, sugars, fiber, vitamins, alkaloids, essential oils, tannins, macro- and microelements necessary for human nutrition. Secondly, these are the organoleptic and commercial indicators of the crop - size, color, color, smell, taste, suitability for processing and other properties.

Thirdly, these are the maximum permissible amounts of those substances, the content of which in the crop is not so necessary, and maybe even dangerous for human health. Therefore, it is necessary to strive to get not only a good harvest, but also high quality, with the maximum content of those valuable chemicals in it, for which the plants are grown.

The quality of the crop can vary widely. The protein content in wheat, for example, can range from 9 to 25%, starch in potatoes - from 10 to 24%, sugar in beets - from 12 to 22%; the content of fat in oilseeds, sugars and vitamins in fruits and vegetables, alkaloids and essential oils in alkaloid and essential oil plants - 1.5-2 times, macro- and microelements - 2-10 times. This means that when fertilizing, even with an equal yield, from the same sown area, you can get several times more economically valuable products.

For the time being, the quality of agricultural crops in suburban areas remains at a low level and does not fully meet the needs of the population. Products of low quality not only have low nutritional value, but are also poorly stored. Losses of potatoes, fruit and berry and vegetable crops during storage can reach 50 percent or more. Therefore, improving the quality of the crop is one of the important tasks facing dacha farming.

The crop itself is formed, as you know, as a result of growth processes, by cell division: the more cells, the higher the yield. Quality is the result of complex biochemical processes that occur in a living organism through the impact on it of environmental factors: humidity, temperature, light, air, soil and fertilizers. Of all these factors, fertilization is the most powerful and fastest-acting agent in crop quality management.

With fertilizers, plants receive nutrients that change their chemical composition and serve as building blocks for creating new organic compounds or for increasing the activity of enzymes. Therefore, improving the supply of plants with certain nutrients at different stages of growth, it is possible to change the direction of metabolic processes in the desired direction and cause the accumulation of proteins, starch, sugars, fats, alkaloids, vitamins and other economically valuable substances in plants.

In order to better understand the quality of the crop, we will get acquainted with the biochemical composition of plants, no matter how complex it may be. Any plant tissue contains many thousands of different organic and mineral compounds. Most of them are found in plants in small amounts (proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, etc.). However, they play an essential role in the life of plants. There are more substances such as cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin in plants, but they are needed to create supporting, skeletal and integumentary tissues, so they accumulate more in stems, seed and cell membranes. Some compounds are formed in large quantities only in certain plant organs - seeds, fruits, roots, tubers. Plants use them to continue their kind. And you and I use them in our food. These include proteinsfats, starch and sugars as the main components of crop quality.

Some plants accumulate specific organic compounds - alkaloids, glycosides, essential oils and resins, various phenolic and hydroaromatic compounds, etc., which determine the size, shape, color, smell and taste of products. The composition of the crop includes numerous minerals - phosphorus, potassium, trace elements, without which our life would be impossible at all. All this complex of organic and mineral substances forms the so-called dry matter of plants, which ultimately determines the size of the crop.

Many organs and tissues of plants contain a relatively small amount of dry matter, but a relatively large amount of water. The ratio between them fluctuates depending on the type of plant, age and physiological state, growing conditions and time of day. The approximate content of water and dry matter in the fruits of peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers is 92-96% and 4-8%, respectively, in cabbage, radishes, turnips - 90-93 and 7-10%, in carrots, beets, bulbs onions - 85-90 and 10-15%, in potato tubers - 75-80 and 20-25%, in seeds of legumes and oilseeds - 7-15 and 85-93%. When seeds ripen, the amount of water decreases, and the dry matter content rises to 85-90% of the total weight. Fertilizers play a leading role in the accumulation of dry matter.

When growing plants, you need to get as much dry matter as possible. It should be noted that a significant amount of them is still in root residues and in plant waste, but this has a positive value for the nutrient cycle of the summer cottage, they can be reused for composting, mulching and increasing soil fertility.

The share of carbon in the dry matter of plants accounts for about 42-45%, oxygen - 40-42% and hydrogen - 6-7%, that is, they account for an average of 90-94% of the total dry matter content, and the rest is nitrogen and mineral (ash) elements - 6-10%. That's not a lot. However, the harvest in most cases depends only on them, that is, on fertilizers, because the ash elements come to the summer cottage only with fertilizers.

Potato tubers contain 78% water, 1.3% protein, 2% crude protein, 0.1% fat, 17% starch, 0.8% fiber, 1% ash (if the plant is burned). Carrots contain 86% water, 0.7% protein, 1.3% crude protein, 0.2% fat, 9% starch, 1.1% fiber, 0.9% ash. The nitrogen content in various plants ranges from 1 to 3% and ash - from 1 to 6%. In ash, phosphorus makes up 40-50% of its weight, potassium - 30-40%, magnesium and calcium - 8-12%, i.e. these four elements account for up to 90-95% of the total amount of ash, and the rest is microelements and ultramicroelements. All these elements are applied with fertilizers, and with their help we can control the quality of the crop.

Among organic compounds, proteins are the main constituent of plants. These are high molecular weight organic compounds built from 20 amino acids and 2 amides - asparagine and glutamine. Various organs and tissues of plants contain many thousands of different proteins, mainly enzyme proteins. All transformations of various compounds in plants occur with their obligatory participation. Proteins are an indispensable base for living matter. The content of proteins in the vegetative organs of agricultural plants is usually 5-20% of the dry weight, in cereal seeds - 8-25%, in seeds of legumes and oilseeds - 20-35%. Fluctuations depend on plant variety, growing conditions and fertilizers, especially nitrogen fertilizers.

When we grow our plants, we strive primarily for a crop with a higher amount of protein. The elemental composition of proteins is quite constant, they all contain 51-55% carbon, 6.5-7% hydrogen, 15-18% nitrogen, 21-24% oxygen and 0.3-1.5% sulfur. Vegetable proteins play an essential role in the nutrition of the population. Every day a person with food must receive at least 70-100 g of protein. Lack of protein in the diet leads to serious metabolic disorders.

All proteins are divided into two groups depending on their solubility in various solvents: simple proteins or proteins built from amino acid residues, and proteids, or complex proteins, consisting of a simple protein and some other non-protein compound firmly bound to it. Proteins include the following proteins: albumin (soluble in water), globulins - soluble in weak solutions of neutral salts, which are very widespread in plants (in seeds of legumes and oilseeds, they constitute the bulk of proteins), prolamins - soluble in alcohol (found only in cereal seeds - gliadins of wheat and rye seeds, casein - corn, avenin - oats), glutelins - insoluble in water and salt solutions, but soluble in weak alkali solutions. Prolamins and glutelins make up the bulk of wheat gluten and ensure the quality of bread and pasta.

Proteids are divided into groups depending on the nature of the non-protein part: lipoproteins, where the protein is tightly bound to various fat-like substances, lipoids, which are part of the semipermeable partitions between cells and into intracellular structures; glucoproteins, they include carbohydrates or their derivatives; chromoproteins consist of a protein associated with some colored non-protein substance, for example, green chlorophyll, which plays an important role in the process of photosynthesis; nucleoproteins are one of the most important groups of proteins associated with nucleic acids. With their participation, the transfer of hereditary information and the biosynthesis of other protein substances occur.