Physiological studies on a nutritive solution for ornamental plants

Ornamental plants can be easily submitted to stressing conditions that modify their metabolism. As a consequence, hypodevelopment increases their susceptibility to several diseases. Long-term mono-cultivation as well as soil and leaves lixiviation, are main causes of mineral depletion. Changes in microflora, mini and mesofauna are also common findings. Acting in concert, these factors deeply hamper plant development. Mineral fertilizers, containing all macro- and micronutrients necessary for plant growing, flowering and fructification are not available in the market. So, we propose a new nutritive solution as a mineral foliar fertilizer for decorative plants growing in small and restricted environments. Taking as growth parameters the total amount of chlorophills, total proteins, dried stuffs and ashes in P. vulgaris, used as experimental model, it is shown that plants treated with the proposed nutritive mineral solution, for 20 consecutive days, grew healthily and faster as compared to the distilled water-treated controls.