Instrumental and Methodological Support for the Diagnostics of Nutritional Requirements of Plants

Abstract

Introduction. Mineral fertilizers essential for intensive crop production technologies are an expensive and environmentally unsafe resource polluting the soil and agricultural products when applied in excess. The purpose of the research is instrumental and methodological support for modern functional diagnostics of nutritional requirements of plants, which is aimed at activating the photosynthesis process. Materials and Methods. It is proposed, for identifying nutritional requirements of plants to replace numerous intermediate plastic test tubes with a mixture of permanent components (sodium chloride, chloroplast suspension and Tillmans’ paint) for the diagnostic solution variants by a separate elastic light-protective container. A homogeneous mixture in a separate container eliminates the error in the concentration of solution components, which accompanies the repeated formation of mixtures in intermediate test tubes. This made it possible to reduce a number of repeated operations of filling intermediate test tubes with pipette dispensers for each tested mixture of elements. The studies were carried out in 2021–2022 using mechanical pipette dispensers Lenpipet Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finland) – 10 ml, Lenpipet Color – 100 μl and Lenpipet Color – 200 μl. Their error was determined on a VK-600 electronic balance. Results. The use of innovation increased the reliability of diagnostic data due to a 8.6% average reduction of error in the concentration of components in the mixture solution. In addition, the time spent on performing diagnostics decreased by 1.7 times that, under the conditions of a limited lifetime of chloroplasts, had a favorable effect on obtaining reliable data. Discussion and Conclusion. Reliable diagnostic data on nutritional requirements of plants will save fertilizer resources and improve the quality of agricultural production free from excessive nutrients.