Humates And Chemical Fertilizers

Intensive agricultural systems demand the use of large quantities of mineral fertilizers in order to supply the plants with basic micro-elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.  In doing so, we often forget that mineral fertilizer is for plants what illegal drugs are for sportsmen - you can immediately see high results but tend to ignore the future consequences.  The higher the amount of mineral fertilizer used, the more intensive is the erosion of the soil, the poorer the soil’s humus content, and the environment is more polluted

The problem of effective mineral fertilizer assimilation is central in plant-growing.  The difficulty of its solution lies in the fact that water soluble potassium and nitrogen fertilizers are easily washed out of the soil, while phosphorus fertilizers, on the contrary, bond with ions of Ca, Mg, Al, and Fe that are present in soil and form inert compounds, which are inaccessible to plants.

The presence of humic substances, however, substantially increases effective assimilation of all mineral nutrition elements.  It was shown in the tests of barley that humate treatment (with NPK) improved its growth, development, and the crop capacity while decreasing the use of mineral fertilizer

The tests on wheat showed that one-way use of nitrogen fertilizers on winter wheat crops did not have a high positive effect on the crop capacity, while its use along with humates and super phosphate achieved an expected positive effect.  Interestingly, the mechanism of interaction between humates and micro-elements of mineral nutrition is specific for each of them.

The positive process of Nitrogen assimilation occurs due to an intensification of the ion-exchange processes, while the negative processes of “nitrate” formulation decelerates.  Potassium assimilation accelerates due to a selective increase in the penetrability of cell membranes.  As for phosphorus, humates bond ions of Ca, Mg, and Al first, which prevents the formation of insoluble phosphates.  That is why the increase of humate content leads to an increase of the plant’s phosphorus consumption.