Summary
All plants respond in a qualitatively similar way to low availability of major nutrients by reduced acquisition, lower tissue nutrient concentrations (high efficiency of nutrient use), reduced growth, and effective retranslocation of nutrients from senescing leaves. Plants compensate for reduced nutrient status by increasing their physiological potential to acquire the limiting nutrients. Plants adapted to high-nutrient habitats show the above responses to the greatest degree. Plants adapted to low-nutrient habitats have a high capacity to acquire those nutrients that are mobile in the soil (e.g. potassium. nitrate) and a low capacity to acquire less mobile ions (phosphate, ammonium). In response to pulses of nutrient availability, such plants exhibit luxury consumption of nutrients; these nutrient stores then support a slow growth rate over a long period of time. Although all plants growing under conditions of nutrient stress typically have high efficiency of nutrient use in producing biomass, there is currently little evidence that those plants adapted to infertile soils have a genetic potential for high rates of carbon or nutrient gain per unit nutrient. Such plants maximize their efficiency of nutrient use primarily by prolonging tissue life so that each unit of nutrient provides a maximum return before being lost from the plant.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster
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Chapin, F.S. (1987). Adaptations and physiological responses of wild plants to nutrient stress. In: Gabelman, W.H., Loughman, B.C. (eds) Genetic Aspects of Plant Mineral Nutrition. Developments in Plant and Soil Sciences, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3581-5_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3581-5_2
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