Skip to main content
Ch. 37 - Soil and Plant Nutrition

Chapter 37, Problem 1

The inorganic nutrient most often lacking in crops is a. carbon. b. nitrogen. c. phosphorus. d. potassium.

Verified Solution
Video duration:
2m
This video solution was recommended by our tutors as helpful for the problem above.
Was this helpful?

Video transcript

Hello everyone. And in today's video we have most crops usually face the deficiency of which nutrients. And so to solve this problem, we're going to look at how plants receive each of the nutrients listed in order to for us to determine which will be most efficient in the plant. So let's begin by answer choice. A potash in fashion is usually present in the soil. Are on the plant, in the form of the potassium ion K. Plus. And so plants or the roots of the plants will usually face no issue at absorbing protection so we can cancel it out and plants will not usually face efficiency of this nutrient moving on. We have oxygen. If you recall photosynthesis plants are actually able to produce their own oxygen which is going to be a byproduct of this process as we can see here. And so since plants are able to produce their own oxygen will usually not be a deficiency of oxygen implants, we can also cancel this out. Moving on, we have phosphorus and this is when it starts to get complicated, plants cannot simply absorb elemental phosphorus. They have to do it through the phosphate iron. And then this phosphate ion is used for D. N. A. D. P. And many other things. However, since plants can absorb elemental phosphorus and they have to do it through another molecule becomes a bit more difficult for them to metabolize it. And so at times efficiency of phosphorous maybe present. However, we also have nitrogen which just like phosphorous plant cannot, plants cannot absorb elemental nitrogen. They have to do it through the nitrate ion and they have an extra process added to it. They cannot simply use the natural eye on these nitrate ion has to undergo the petrification, which is a process the plants, along with certain bacteria, are able to perform. But because nitrogen has to undergo a whole process in order for it to be metabolized by a plant, it is going to be the nutrient that plants face in most efficiency and we can highlight it as being our final answer. So thank you very much for sticking around until the end of this video. I really hope this video helped you and I hope to see you on the next one.