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Silica Accumulation in Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Plants and Implications for Potato Yield Performance – Results from Field Experiments in Ne Germany
Puppe, D.; Busse, J.; Stein, M.; Kaczorek, D.; Buhtz, C.; Schaller, J. Silica Accumulation in Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Plants and Implications for Potato Yield Performance—Results from Field Experiments in Northeast Germany. Biology2024, 13, 828.
Puppe, D.; Busse, J.; Stein, M.; Kaczorek, D.; Buhtz, C.; Schaller, J. Silica Accumulation in Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Plants and Implications for Potato Yield Performance—Results from Field Experiments in Northeast Germany. Biology 2024, 13, 828.
Puppe, D.; Busse, J.; Stein, M.; Kaczorek, D.; Buhtz, C.; Schaller, J. Silica Accumulation in Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Plants and Implications for Potato Yield Performance—Results from Field Experiments in Northeast Germany. Biology2024, 13, 828.
Puppe, D.; Busse, J.; Stein, M.; Kaczorek, D.; Buhtz, C.; Schaller, J. Silica Accumulation in Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Plants and Implications for Potato Yield Performance—Results from Field Experiments in Northeast Germany. Biology 2024, 13, 828.
Abstract
The potato is the most important non-cereal food crop, and thus improving potato growth and yield is in the focus of agricultural researchers and practitioners worldwide. Several studies reported beneficial effects of silicon (Si) fertilization on potato performance, although plant species from the family Solanaceae are generally considered as non-Si-accumulating. We used results from two field experiments in the temperate zone to gain insight into silica accumulation in potato plants as well as corresponding long-term potato yield performance. We found relatively low Si contents in potato leaves and roots (up to 0.08% and 0.3% in the dry mass, respectively) and negligible Si contents in potato tuber skin and tuber flesh for plants grown in soils with different concentrations of plant available Si (field experiment 1). Moreover, potato yield was not correlated to plant available Si concentrations in soils in the long-term (1965-2015, field experiment 2). Based on our results we ascribe the beneficial effects of Si fertilization on potato growth and yield performance reported in previous studies mainly to antifungal/osmotic effects of foliar-applied Si fertilizers and to changes in physicochemical soil properties (e.g., enhanced phosphorus availability and water holding capacity) caused by soil-applied Si fertilizers.
Keywords
Phytogenic silica; crop production; phytoliths; sustainability; biogenic silica; stress resilience; plant available silicon; silica amendment; long-term field experiment
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Agricultural Science and Agronomy
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.