International Journal of Agricultural Management and Development (Dec 2011)
Implication of Micronutrients in Agriculture and Health with Special Reference to Iron and Zinc
Abstract
The green revolution fulfilled the food demand of crowdedmillions. From the time of green revolution to till date highyielding and fertilizer responsive varieties have evolved toincrease the production per unit area. To improve the productivityonly major nutrients are concentrated almost in all crops. Thoughthe importance of micronutrient realized during past decades inmost of the crops but it is not effectively materialized in generalcrop cultivation practices. The micronutrient deficiencies in soilare not only hamper crop productivity but also deteriorating theproduce quality. World health organization (WHO) has estimatedthat over 3 billion people in the globe suffer from the micronutrientmalnutrition and about 2 billion people of these have irondeficiency. Iron is one of the 16 essential elements needed forplant growth. Iron is used for the synthesis of chlorophyll and isessential for the function of chloroplasts. Zinc is involved inmembrane integrity, enzyme activation, and gene expression.Rice, sorghum and corn are Zn sensitive and sorghum, sugarcane,groundnut, soyabean, beans, grapes, vegetables and citrus arehighly Fe sensitive crops. To overcome these problems foliarspray is being recommended but it is not crop specific or soilspecific recommendation. Keeping these problems in the view,recently development of micronutrient efficient genotypes,creating awareness of micronutrient dose, crop specific micronutrient uptake and accumulation are vital to improve productivity and to address human health problems. In this paperwe discussed the importance of iron and zinc in agriculture andtheir role in crop plants and ways to improve the crop productivityas well as human health
