Liebig Minimum Law

Liebig's law of minimum is a concept that has had a great impact on the science of biology, agronomy and crop development. Plant nutrition is a complex and difficult area of agronomy. Soils are very different in every part of the world and the interactions have many important variables.

In 1873 the German chemist Justus von Liebig published as a result of his study related to plant nutrition the Law of the Minimum. This idea in a nutshell indicated that a yield is no higher than the weakest link in the chain of growth factors.

Justus von Liebig is considered the Father of the fertiliser industry.

Thus, the health of a crop is not controlled by the total amount of nutrients available in the soil. Rather, it is the proportion of each of them, and in particular the scarcest of the factors responsible for plant development.

Each element in a plant has a specific function and that is why they are all important in their own way and can completely block the correct growth of a plant. This is because it can affect the growth, quality, reproduction and immune systems of plants. And it is not only mineral nutrition that is affected, it is not always easy to determine the cause of a particular problem because of all the conditioning factors that affect the growing environment.

The tests are only a snapshot of the time at which they are performed, but they make it easier to get as close as possible to the desired optimal fertility point.

Below I will provide a table with the general functions of the most studied factors.

Macro-nutrients.

• Carbon - Formation of organic compounds and sugars.
• Oxygen - Obtaining energy from sugar.
• Hydrogen - Water formation.
• Nitrogen-Chlorophyll, amino acids, protein synthesis.
• Phosphorus: vital for photosynthesis and growth.
• Potassium: Enzymatic activity, sugar and starch formation.
• Calcium: Cell growth and division, cell wall component.
• Magnesium: Chlorophyll component, enzyme activation.
• Sulphur: formation of amino acids and proteins.

Micronutrients.

• Boron: Vital for reproduction.
• Chlorine: Helps root growth.
• Copper: Enzyme activation.
• Iron: Used in photosynthesis.
• Manganese: component of chlorophyll, enzyme activation.
• Sodium: Vital for water movement.
• Zinc: Component of enzymes and auxins.
• Molybdenum: Nitrogen fixation.
• Nickel: Nitrogen release.
• Cobalt: Nitrogen fixation.
• Silicon: hardness of the cell wall.

Other factors.

• Sunlight: The only source of energy available to the plant.
• Temperature: Uptake and transport processes are temperature-dependent.
• Soil moisture Nutrient availabilityroot growth, turgor, cooling, mobility of plant resources...

There are more factors that affect growth and they are all important in their own right. And even if some factors are not important to us, there are complex mechanisms that are sometimes not fully understood by science that need to have all the nutrients available.