Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 10
Monitoring Plant Nutritional Status
Moez Maghrebi, Fabio Francesco Nocito, and Gian Attilio Sacchi
Abstract Methods and techniques effective in achieving yield objectives, opti-
mizing the use of resources and preventing environmental contamination are
defined as agronomic Best Management Practices (BMPs). Considering
fertilisations BMPs pursue the aims to match mineral nutrient supply with crop
requirements, minimizing their losses from the field. If spatial and temporal infor-
mation about crop needs were available, precision fertilisation approaches could be
planned in order to increase fertiliser use efficiency and to improve some economic
and environmental aspects related to the crop systems. The state of the art and the
research perspectives on the fine tuning of optical devices allowing proximal or
remote sensing at sub-field scale of crops traits related to plant nutritional status, as
well as on the exploitation of the gene fusion concept in developing transgenic
bioindicators monitoring the nutritional status of the plants are here reviewed and
discussed. Concerning the latter aspect particular attention is paid to the develop-
ment of synthetic promoters conferring to the biondicator nutrient specificity and
also able to target the expression of the associated reporter genes in organs in which
their signals should be early and easily detectable.
Keywords Agronomy • Nutrient monitoring • Fertilizers • Precision agriculture
• Critical concentrations • Bioindicators
Introduction
Mineral nutrient availability is one of the most important factors determining yield
in agriculture. Conventional farming requires a continuous and large supply of
fertilisers to the soil in order to replace the nutrients removed with plant harvest. In
the predicted scenario of a rising demand for food and energy for the expected
world population of about nine billion in 2050 (Godfray et al.
2010
) a dramatic
increase in the use of fertilisers in the crop systems is foreseen. Since fertiliser
production and distribution have a high demand for energy, in the last decade the
