Magnesium in crop production and food quality
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EDITORIAL
Magnesium in crop production and food quality Ismail Cakmak & Philip J. White
Received: 19 October 2020 / Accepted: 21 October 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
After very successful International Symposia on Magnesium in Crop Production and Food Quality in Göttingen, Germany, in May 2012, and in São Paulo, Brazil, in November 2014, the 3rd International Symposium was held in Guangzhou, China, in November 2018. The main topics of this Symposium were the roles of magnesium (Mg) in plant physiology, the molecular biology of plant Mg nutrition, and the consequences of crop Mg nutrition for the nutrition of humans and their livestock. The role of cereals, and their processing, for human Mg nutrition was an important topic of discussion at the Symposium. Cereal grains represent a major source of dietary Mg for human nutrition (White 2016). However, as discussed in this Special Issue by Rosanoff and Kumssa (2020), cereal grains are often subjected to intensive processing, which results in significant losses of Mg and consequently reduces potential Mg intakes from cereal grains by humans. Rosanoff and Kumssa (2020) also observed that the Mg nutritional status of
Responsible Editor: Hans Lambers. I. Cakmak (*) Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: [email protected] P. J. White Ecological Sciences Department, The James Hutton Institute, DD2 5DA Dundee, UK e-mail: [email protected]
humans is affected by body weight which is, however, not considered by international organizations when estimating daily Mg requirements. Prevalence of overweight and obesity among adults is growing worldwide, which would, therefore, affect daily Mg requirements. Adequate Mg nutrition is also necessary for the healthy growth of animals, and is a challenge especially for grazing livestock. Sufficient amounts of available Mg are needed in soils as well as in grass to meet the Mg demand of grazing animals and avoid Mg deficiencyrelated disorders, such as “grass tetany” (White and Broadley 2009), which is a potentially fatal metabolic disorder in animals. In this Mg Special Issue, Kumssa et al. (2020) present several experiments, conducted under both controlled environment and field conditions, examining the potential of Mg fertilization for the enrichment (i.e., biofortification) of Italian ryegrass with Mg. Their results show that the addition of Mg fertilizers is a highly effective strategy for biofortification of Italian ryegrass and, consequently, maintaining the Mg nutritional status of animals. They also observed that cultivars of Italian ryegrass differ greatly in their abilities to accumulate Mg. The cultivar Bb2067 had the largest leaf Mg concentration and it was also the most responsive cultivar to Mg fertilization. In a complementary paper, Penrose et al. (2020) show that Bb2067 consistently exhibits larger leaf Mg concentrations than other cultivars of Italian ryegrass grown across multiple locations and years. The large leaf Mg concentrations f
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