Nickel aNd TurFgraSS growTh : all you Need To kNow

T urfgrass managers are always trying to leverage acceptable conditions with minimal inputs (water, nutrients, and pesticides). Maintaining optimal plant nutrition is the foundation of sustaining healthy turfgrasses that require fewer inputs. Liebig’s Law of the Minimum states that plant growth is controlled not by the total amount of resources (nutrients) available, but by the most scarce resource (limiting factor). Due to the fertilization of macro and most micronutrients, this principle isn’t usually a problem. However, there are trace micronutrients that play critical roles in the plant that we should consider, such as nickel (Ni). Nickel constitutes approximately 3% of the earth’s crust and is the 24th most abundant element. Nickel is a trace micronutrient that was discovered to be essential for plants in the 1980s. Typical ranges of Ni in soils range from 5-500 ppm; however, measuring bioavailability in soils is difficult because the plant available form Ni2+ readily oxidizes in the soil rendering it unavailable. Nickel is commonly forgotten in the world of turfgrass nutrition because of the low concentration found in plants (0.05-10 ppm) which is thought to be adequately provided by the soil. However, Liebig should not be disregarded when it comes to Ni and turfgrass.