Book with abstracts from the COST Action 0905 meeting in ... - UMB

EFFECT OF ADDITION OF SULPHUR FERTILIZER AND ITS
FORM ON ZINC BIOFORTIFICATION OF WHEAT
Flora Conte, Susan Tandy, Rainer Schulin
Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Keywords: zinc, wheat, elemental sulphur, sulphate, grains
The effect of sulphur on the uptake of zinc by wheat is much less studied than the
influence of nitrogen. Increasingly soils are becoming sulphur deficient due to reduction in
air pollution among other factors. Elemental sulphur (S 0 ) is commonly used to acidify
alkaline soil and thus release micro-nutrients such as Zn. However no work has been
carried out to distinguish if pH only or the metabolic function of S in the plant results in
higher Zn uptake by plants. In this study we compared the addition of S 0 , sulphate and zinc
to a deficient soil on their effect on zinc uptake and yields. Soil pH was found not to be
reduced by the 100 mg kg -1 S 0 added to the soil and hence the available Zn was not
increased. Due to the addition of fertilizers only at the start of the experiment, SO 4 addition
resulted in a great deal of vegetative growth but low grain biomass and delayed maturity
due to it having been consumed by grain filling time. S 0 released SO 4 more slowly so
plants had a higher grain biomass, reached maturity faster and had longer for grain filling.
This resulted in a greater total content of Zn and S in grains per pot. If only the treatments
with sufficient Zn and S were considered a correlation between Zn and S concentrations in
grains was found suggesting that Zn is associated with S-containing proteins in the grains.