2024-06-21
NITROGEN IN PLANTS
Healthy plants often contain 3 to 4 percent nitrogen in their above-ground tissues. This is a much higher concentration compared to other nutrients. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, nutrients that don’t play a significant role in most soil fertility management programs, are the only other nutrients present in higher concentrations.Nitrogen is so vital because it is a major component of chlorophyll, the compound by which plants use sunlight energy to produce sugars from water and carbon dioxide (i.e., photosynthesis). It’s also important because nitrogen is a:Major component of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Without proteins, plants wither and die. Some proteins act as structural units in plant cells while others act as enzymes, making possible many of the biochemical reactions on which life is based.Component of energy-transfer compounds, such as ATP (adenosine triphosphate). ATP allows cells to conserve and use the energy released in metabolism.Significant component of nucleic acids such as DNA, the genetic material that allows cells (and eventually whole plants) to grow and reproduce. Without nitrogen, there would be no life as we know it.