Dryland Soil Research (DLSR)

Dryland Soil Research (DLSR)

Nutrient balances of grain wheat grown in calcareous soils of Iran

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Department of Soil Science, College of Agriculture, Razi University, Kermanshah Iran
Abstract
Improving the productivity of wheat, Iran's most important staple crop, remains a major agricultural challenge, highlighting the need for more effective nutrient management strategies. Plant-based foods can be enriched with essential micronutrients by increasing their concentration in edible tissues, enhancing their bioavailability, or both. Micronutrient concentration in the edible portions of forage and food crops is governed by multiple complex, dynamic, and interacting factors, including plant genotype, soil properties, environmental conditions, and nutrient interactions. Compositional Nutrient Diagnosis (CND) was applied to evaluate the nutritional balance of macro- (N, P, K) and micronutrients (Fe, Mn, Zn, and Cu) in wheat grain (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivated under different fertilization systems in Iran. For the low-yielding subpopulation, the dominant CND indices controlling yield variability in the dataset were IFe, IP, and IK, whereas for the high-yielding subpopulation, IMn, IK, and IP were most influential. These findings indicated that Mn deficiency was determined as the most yield-limiting factor, followed by K and P. In contrast, Zn and Fe were not identified as critical limitations, as their bioavailability was enhanced by micronutrient fertilizer application. Zinc treatments recorded the highest frequency in the excellent and good clusters (96.9%), followed by compost (93.8%) and Fe treatments (87.5%). This study identifies previously unreported limiting factors in grain wheat following the application of nutrients from inorganic, organic, and integrated nutrient sources. Practically, by identifying the most limiting nutrients, the CND approach may enable more precise fertilizer recommendations, thereby improving nutrient use efficiency, grain quality, and wheat yield in future crop management.
Keywords
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