Animals and vegetables are alike in at least one important way: They both need minerals to survive. People didn't know about nutrients when they first started growing crops more than 12,000 years ago.¹ Early farmers only knew the basics—plants needed earth, water, and air to grow.

A few thousand years later, humans started applying manure as fertilizer.² Depending on the region and crop, modern farmers may still apply manure to their fields. But many growers understand that sometimes manure is not enough to keep their crops healthy.

What nutrients do crops need?

In addition to the basic elements plants get through air and water (carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen), they need 14 additional nutrients to reach their full yield potential.³

Primary macronutrients
Nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium are the primary nutrients in agriculture. Often applied as an NPK blend, they are needed in larger quantities than other nutrients.

Secondary macronutrients
Just as important, but less critical to a fertilization program are the second tier nutrients—sulfur, magnesium, and calcium. While they are needed in the same quantities as NPKs, plants get most of their required levels from the soil.

Micronutrients
Scientists and farmers discovered another layer in agriculture's intricate chemical orchestra. We call them micronutrients not because they are unimportant, but because plants only need small amounts of them.

There are eight micronutrients that are vital to producing full-volume crop yield: Boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, and zinc.

Micronutrients powering better agriculture yield

These elements are the unsung heroes of the plant world. A little goes a long way, but they have an enormous impact on plants’ survival.

Boron
Boron is integral to a plant's reproductive cycle—controlling flowering, pollen production, germination, and seed and fruit development. In addition, research shows that boron plays a significant role in:

• The strength of plant cell walls
• Membrane function and cell division
• Stimulation/inhibition of metabolic pathways
• New and reproductive growth

Learn more about our field research

Take the boron out of the system and what happens? Celery grows crooked. Carrots fork. Apple cores get corky. Table beets blacken. Peanuts develop hollow hearts. And, cotton yields decrease. While these problems sound minor, the consequences are major for the farmer who cannot market the damaged crop.

Chlorine
You know it as a foundation of table salt. But, chlorine is also a key in energy reactions in plants, specifically the chemical breakdown of water in the presence of sunlight. It also helps control water loss and suppresses disease and infections.

Copper
Most recognizable in wires, copper’s biggest role in agriculture is as the micronutrient that makes the most fundamental chemical process in the world possible: Photosynthesis. Chlorophyll—what makes plants green and allows them to synthesize food from sunlight, air, and water—contains copper.

Iron
When humans learned how to smelt iron, they were able to craft stronger tools and weapons. Iron’s power in the plant world lies in its ability to carry oxygen. It plays a leading role in plant respiration, photosynthesis, and energy transfer.

Manganese
Manganese is used to make batteries and forge steel in modern industry. In plants, it functions primarily as part of the enzyme system. Manganese plays a direct role in photosynthesis by aiding chlorophyll synthesis.

Molybdenum
Molybdenum can be found in leather dyes, ceramic glazes, printing ink… and plants, where it works to foster protein synthesis, enzyme systems, and nitrogen metabolism.

Nickel
Nickel is mostly used in metal alloys such as stainless steel.⁴ Because nickel is a more recent addition to the micronutrient list, not much is known about how it functions in plants.

Zinc
Strong enough to keep iron and steel from rusting, gentle enough to soothe skin irritations, zinc also controls the production of important growth regulators in plants that affect development. Zinc is such an important part of agriculture, that we developed a zinc borate fertilizer product to specifically address boron and zinc deficiencies. Learn more about Zincubor^®.

Next steps

Civilization has its roots in the fields of agriculture. Knowledge of micronutrients—and increasingly sophisticated methods of determining micronutrient deficiency through soil testing and plant tissue analysis—promises to increase food yield through a very simple equation: Sufficient nutrients mean higher crop yield.

For more information about how plants use boron and other nutrients, download our infographic.

Resources

• How plants' use boron
• Crop guides
• U.S. Borax agriculture products
• Agronomy note: Does manure contain enough boron?
• Blog: Macro and micro: The large and small of soil nutrients
• Rio Tinto products