Iron deficiency chlorosis in aromatic grasses—A review

Abstract

Land degradation is a major threat to environmental sustainability (Mehrabi et al., 2021). About 25% of the earth's surface is alkaline in nature and nutrient deficiencies are common in such lands (López-Bucio et al. 2000). Aromatic grasses are the economically important grasses and essential oil produced by these grasses has tremendous demand worldwide. Present status of essential oil production by these grasses is less than the market demand. Although, these grasses are adapted to various ecological conditions but iron deficiency chlorosis is prominent under alkaline soils. Losses due to iron chlorosis in groundnut, maize and other field crops were studied in past and treatments consisting organic, inorganic salts, Fe-chelates, nanoparticles were suggested to minimize the losses. Fe-chelates such as Fe-eddha are effective but are not economical and much expensive. These grasses not being food crop utilized mainly for secondary metabolites production makes them a potential economical source to farmers’ practicing agriculture on marginal lands. Severe decline in crop yield, quality and physiological parameters due to IDC were studied in palmarosa, lemongrass and citronella; however, sufficient mitigation studies in aromatic grasses is not much explored. Understanding the causes, occurrence and mitigation experiments involving microbial consortia (s) or other resistant varieties for the IDC conditions becomes a necessity to find approaches to minimize the losses in commercially cultivated aromatic grasses.

Keywords

• Aromatic substances
• Bicarbonates
• Carbonates
• Enzymes
• Land degradation
• Volatile