New App Manages
Almond Potassium Consumption
Great Salt Lake Minerals, a subsidiary of Compass Minerals, launches a powerful mobile tool designed to help California
almond growers, agronomists and pest control advisors (PCAs) make more accurate
soil nutrient decisions and maximize yield potential.
Almonds remove a tremendous amount of potassium from the soil each crop
year. In a study for the California Almond Board in 2011, Dr. Patrick Brown and
other UC Davis researchers reported that almond
production can drain as much as 80 pounds of potassium out of the soil per
1,000 pounds of kernel and more than 65 pounds of nitrogen per 1,000 pounds of
kernel.
“We’re coming off two back-to-back years of large almond crops, and that
can deplete the nutrients in soil dramatically,” explains Wes Asai, owner of
Wes Asai Pomology Consulting in Turlock, Calif.
It can take years for the symptoms of potassium deficiency to appear in
almond trees. Maintaining adequate potassium levels in the orchard produces
healthier trees that are more capable of handling stresses such as drought and
disease.
A 2001 study by Brown and another group of UC Davis
researchers found that trees with less than 1.4 percent of potassium in a July
leaf sample experienced a 27 percent increase in spur mortality and a 30
percent decrease in return bloom of fruiting spurs the following year.
“When the almond crop depletes the soil of nutrients that could be compared
to withdrawing money from the bank,” says David Doll, a UC Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor based in Merced County, Calif. “You have to
replace that amount in order to avoid future potassium deficiency in the
orchard. You have to build up your potassium credit.”
Labels: Almond Potassium Calculator, almonds, David Doll, K, Merced County, Patrick Brown, pomology consulting, Potassium, UC Farm Advisor, Wes Asai