Importance of early, mid and late season application of Calcium

(Sponsored) Good calcium levels in potato tubers can reduce multiple quality problems including Internal Rust Spot (IRS), internal browning and hollow heart. Calcium also plays a role in reducing susceptibility to bruising and post-harvest diseases. However, despite this, farmers do not always get a good response to calcium fertilizers. Here we explore why, and what can be done to improve it.

So what exactly do plants do with calcium?
Calcium’s main function within cell walls is to give cell wall rigidity & strength, explains Dr. David Marks, managing director of Levity Crop Science. The main symptom of calcium deficiency is the disintegration of cell walls and the collapse of affected tissues.

It’s this tissue collapse that contributes to IRS, internal browning, and premature rotting and bruising post-harvest.

Potatoes don’t actually need very much calcium, the quality problems associated with calcium result from tiny local deficiencies, but these minor deficiencies (in terms of the amount of tuber affected) can make crops unsellable.

While tubers may have small areas of calcium deficiency, the rest of the plant rarely suffers any shortage at all, and is often precipitating Ca out from leaves as in excess.

The Math should make us Think
If a 24 tons/acre crop of potatoes had complete loss due to internal rust spot, the actual quantity of Ca-deficient tissue (2% of each tuber is actually affected) is only 624 lbs/acre. The difference between the affected and healthy part of the potato is typically only 4ppm.

Therefore, the amount of calcium required to prevent an entire 24 tons/acre crop of potato from having internal browning is only 0.0025 lbs/acre. This should raise a few questions for growers.

• Why are small parts of the tuber deficient when the area right next to them isn’t?
• Why are these small areas of tissue deficient in Ca when there’s no whole plant deficiency?
• Why doesn’t applying large amounts of calcium reverse the deficiency?

In order to answer these questions, it’s important to understand how calcium behaves in a plant, he says. There are two factors to be considered in plant Ca availability; transport and absorption.

Ca Transport
Unlike most other mineral nutrients, Ca isn’t phloem mobile and can only be transported through the xylem. Ca enters the plant with water and is transported upwards with transpiration, where it’s either absorbed and stored, or is precipitated from the leaves as excess.

Ca only moves upwards. Nobody has ever witnessed or discovered a way to change this. This is why targeting and correct placement of applications of calcium is so important. Ca applied to leaves can’t correct problems in the roots. Therefore, foliar sprays of Ca fertilizers will never put the nutrients into the tuber. It’s physiologically impossible for the plant to move calcium down.

Ca Absorption
Ca is absorbed into cells using polar-auxin transport, as auxin moves out of the cell, Ca enters and replaces it. Parts of a plant that are low in auxin can’t absorb the nutrient effectively, regardless of how much is available.

High auxin-producing areas include new shoots, new flowers, and new leaves. Low auxin-producing areas include fruits, roots and tubers.

This is why applying Ca to correct physiological disorders can be so ineffective. It doesn’t matter how much is applied, parts of the plant with low auxin levels such as tubers can’t absorb it properly.

Target optimum absorption stages
Time applications to when tubers can absorb it. Tubers produce very little auxin once they start growing, so to get conventional Ca sources into a tuber it really needs to be done during the cell division stage. Once tubers reach 5mm in size there’s very little new cell formation, and auxin levels decline. For Ca to be able to get into the tuber it needs to be available between hook and 5mm tuber size.

Use LoCal chemistry
LoCal is a chemistry that allows low auxin parts of plants (like tubers) to absorb calcium. Calcium fertilizers incorporating LoCal like Cell Power® Calcium Gold and Cell Power® Calcium Platinum (marketed in the US by OMEX® USA) are most effective.

Cell Power® Calcium Gold and Cell Power® Platinum have been incredibly effective on fruit crops preventing calcium related physiological disorders.

For more information on products please contact OMEX® Agrifluids at [email protected] or call 559-661-6138.