LANDSCAPING   GLASSHOUSES   HUSBANDRY   HORTICULTURE   ENVIRONMENTAL

Silicon in soil and plant

Silicon is thought to be not essential for plants. When plants grow with no silicon at all, they still grow, and show no clear silicon related or other deficiency symptoms.

Some plants grow a lot better and are more resistant to diseases. Silicon improves the cell membranes and strengthens plant tissues and reduces water loss and retards fungal infection. Where large amounts of Silicon are accumulated, intercellular deposits can be formed as plant opal. Roses, rice, bamboo and cucumber seem to benefit the most of a good silicon concentration in the soil. Strawberries are at the moment the only know plant that has an adverse to silicon. The quality and the yield of strawberries are decreases when the silicon content of the soil is good or high.

Our silicon analysis

In our laboratory two fractions of silicon are analyzed. The soluble silicon that can easily taken up by plants, and on the other side the more to the soil attached silicon that can leached off by root exudates. Silicon is absorbed from the soil solution as monosilicic acid or silica; its absorption is usually proportional to its concentration in the solution and to water flow.

Silicon and the interaction between other elements

Soluble phosphate has some comparison with soluble silicates. When phosphate fixation occurs, silicates can partly intervene. In the plant, silicon reduces the phytotoxity of aluminum. In rice silicon seems to inhibit deleterious effects of arsenic and germanium. Soluble silicon stimulates the growth of some plants. This stimulation seems to be related to the observed effects of silicon on increased phosphorus a molybdenum uptake by plants, as well as on manganese transport within plant tissues.

Silicon and plants

Silicon is a common constituent of plants, and its amounts may vary by two orders of magnitude (100). The mean Silicon content range from 0.3% to 1,2 % in the dry matter of grass. In clover 0.04 to 0.13% Si and 0.1 to 0,2 % Si in alfalfa (dry weight). Rice plants can accumulate till 10%.

More on silicon

Silicon is the most abundant and, relatively, the most stable electropositive element in the earth's crust; however, under specific conditions it can be dissolved and transported, but it moves mainly in its colloidal phase. All silicate minerals are built of a fundamental structural unit, SoO4, the so-called tetrahedron.