ABSTRACT
Nutrients interact during numerous biological, physical, or chemical processes along the soil-root-shoot continuum such that the level of one nutrient alters the availability, uptake, or plant response to another nutrient (Zhang et al., 2006). Given the very nature of ionic balance in plant nutrition and the ionic interactions in soil chemistry and fertility, virtually all soil-plant processes involve nutrient interactions, making a comprehensive review a boundless task. ¤is review will focus on key concepts and provide examples to illustrate them. ¤e availability and ¥ow of any given nutrient through the continuum are constantly in¥uenced by the activity and form of other nutrients, and the nature and rate of these interactions are su¬ciently complex that they are sometimes beyond our current ability to measure and quantify their impacts. ¤e nutrient interactions that are most oen recognized and documented have for the most part been observed in soil fertility experiments that characterize crop nutrient uptake and growth response to one or more nutrients added to the system. ¤us, this review will focus on the examples of nutrient and other elemental (e.g., heavy metals) interactions documented in the soil fertility literature, with subsequent discussion of plausible chemical and biological mechanisms of those same interactions along the soil-root-shoot continuum as described in the soil chemistry, soil microbiology, and plant nutrition literature.
