Nearly all the chemical elements that make up living things are mineral elements, the ultimate source of which is rock weathered into soil. In this thoroughly revised 2nd edition, Epstein and Bloom explain that plant roots 'mine' these nutrients elementsfrom their inorganic substrate and introduce them into the realm of living things.

The elements of plant nutrition. Transport. Aspects of energetics and the metabolism of individual elements. Heredity and environment in plant nutrition.

This text presents the principles of mineral nutrition in the light of current advances. For this second edition more emphasis has been placed on root water relations and functions of micronutrients as well as external and internal factors on root growth and the root-soil interface.

Plant nutrition; The soil as a plant nutrient medium; Nutrient uptake and assimilation; Plant water relationships; Plant growth and crop production; Fertilizer application; Nitrogen; Sulphur; Phosphorus; Potassium; Calcium; Magnesium; Iron; Manganese; Zinc; Copper; Molybdenum; Boron; Further elements of importance; Elements with more toxic effects.

An understanding of the mineral nutrition of plants is of fundamental importance in both basic and applied plant sciences. The fourth edition of this book retains the aim of the first in presenting the principles of mineral nutrition in the light of current advances. Marschner's Mineral Nutrition of Plants, 4th Edition, is divided into two parts: Nutritional Physiology and Plant–Soil Relationships. In Part I, emphasis is put on uptake and transport of nutrients in plants, root–shoot interactions, role of mineral nutrition in yield formation, stress physiology, water relations, functions of mineral nutrients and contribution of plant nutrition to food nutritional quality, disease tolerance, and global nutritional security of human populations. In view of the increasing interest in plant–soil interactions. Part II focuses on the effects of external and internal factors on root growth, rhizosphere chemistry and biology, soil-borne ion toxicities, and nutrient cycling. Now with color figures throughout, this book continues to be a valuable reference for plant and soil scientists and undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of plant nutrition, nutritional physiology, and soil fertility. - Offers new content on the relationship between climate change, soil fertility and crop nutrition - Keeps overall structure of previous editions - Includes updates in every chapter on new developments, ideas and challenges

The burgeoning demand on the world food supply, coupled with concern over the use of chemical fertilizers, has led to an accelerated interest in the practice of precision agriculture. This practice involves the careful control and monitoring of plant nutrition to maximize the rate of growth and yield of crops, as well as their nutritional value.

The first book bearing the title of this volume, Inorganic Plant Nutrition, was written by D. R. HOAGLAND of the University of California at Berkeley. As indicated by its extended title, Lectures on the Inorganic Nutrition of Plants, it is a collection of lectures - the JOHN M. PRATHER lectures, which he was invited in 1942 to give. at Harvard University and presented there between April 10 and 23 of that year - 41 years before the publication of the present volume. They were not "originally intended for publication" but fortunately HOAGLAND was persuaded to publish them; the book appeared in 1944. It might at first blush seem inappropriate to draw comparisons between a book embodying a set of lectures by a single author and an encyclopedic volume with no less than 37 contributors. But HOAGLAND'S book was a compre hensive account of the state of this science in his time, as the present volume is for ours. It was then still possible for one person, at least for a person of HOAGLAND'S intellectual breadth and catholicity of interests, to encompass many major areas of the entire field, from the soil substrate to the metabolic roles of nitrogen, potassium, and other nutrients, and from basic scientific topics to the application of plant nutritional research in solving problems encountered in the field.