Plant biostimulants and their influence on nutrient use efficiency (NUE)

Publication date: 27/07/2020
Extent: 40 pages

Contributions by: Patrick H. Brown, Douglas C. Amaral, Meerae Park, Jennifer Schmidt and Amelie Gaudin, University of California-Davis, USA

Chapter synopsis: This chapter reviews evidence for effects of biostimulants on both agronomic nutrient use efficiency and internal nutrient use efficiency. Many biostimulants improve the agronomic nutrient use efficiency (AE) by enhancing root growth and soil exploration, increasing solubilization of soil nutrients or upregulating nutrient uptake processes thereby enabling a greater amount of the total soil nutrient reserve to be acquired by the plant. There is, however, much less evidence to demonstrate that biostimulants alter the internal nutrient use efficiency (IE) by increasing the productivity of a crop for a given quantity of acquired nutrient. Improving NUE is of great practical value as it allows for the greater exploitation of added fertilizers and improved recovery of residual nutrients.

DOI: 10.19103/AS.2020.0068.13