Soil & Admendments

Soil amendment such as leaching B with water and application of organic compounds to inactivate or immobilize B in soil has been considered the main approach to solve B toxicity issue for many years. Nowadays, it appears not feasible on a large scale in B-toxic areas because of economic and practical aspects. On the contrary, the most realistic and effective method to increase crop yields in B-rich soils could be the selection of B excess–tolerant genotypes (Nable et al., 1997).

Genetic variation for B excess tolerance has been assessed in many crop species since the 1980s until now (Schnurbusch et al., 2010b; Bogacki et al., 2013). Therefore, tolerant varieties can be rather easily bred, offering a most hopeful approach to minimizing decreases in crop yield in areas with high B concentrations in the soil.