Nutrient deficiency or excess will cause citrus trees to grow poorly and produce sub-optimal yield and/or fruit quality. Diagnosis of potential nutritional problems should be a routine citrus-growing practice. Quantifying nutrients in soils and trees eliminates guesswork when adjusting a fertilizer program (Fig. 1).
This document, which is adapted from Chapter 4 of Nutrition of Florida Citrus Trees, 2nd Edition (http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ss478), explains the value of leaf and soil testing when choosing fertilizer programs to increase fertilizer efficiency while maintaining maximum yield and desirable fruit quality. Soil testing and leaf tissue analysis do not asses all of the same factors, so care must be taken to choose the correct test when diagnosing citrus nutrition (Table 1).
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Article Source:
Thomas A. Obreza, Mongi Zekri, Edward A. Hanlon, Kelly Morgan, Arnold Schumann, and Robert
Rouse
UF/IFAS
Image Source:
Mongi Zekri, UF/IFAS