Plant nutrition plays a major role in quantitative and qualitative crop production in bringing sustainability and plants require seventeen essential elements for their normal growth and development. Among these, those elements required smaller in quantity is called micronutrients (Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn, B, Cl, Mo and Ni). Micronutrients are essentially as important as macronutrients to have better growth, yield and quality in plants. Micronutrients are involved in plant metabolism, nutrient regulation, reproductive growth, chlorophyll synthesis, production of carbohydrates, fruit and seed development, etc. They have assumed increasing importance in crop production under present exploitative agriculture system. Intensive cultivation of high yielding varieties and use of high analysis fertilizers disturb the nutrient balance in soil. As results, micronutrients become limiting factor for crop production. Horticultural crops suffer widely by iron and zinc deficiencies followed by other micronutrients deficiencies. Due to these deficiencies some healthy orchards are turning into unproductive plantation with poor quality fruit. Micronutrients are to be necessarily taken up by the plants from soil or supplemented through chemical fertilizers or through other sources by soil application or foliar application for good growth and yield of crops. These also maximize the efficient use of applied major nutrients. The present study is an attempt to review the literature and explore the proper use of micronutrients to mitigate the deficiency of particular element that has effects on production potential of tropical and subtropical fruit crops. | A review on use of micronutrients in tropical and subtropical fruit crops
