Be Your Own Cotton Doctor     Nutrient Sufficiency Ranges

Adequate cotton nutrition is necessary to achieve farmer goals for high lint yields, desirable lint quality, and improved profits. Essential nutrients must be taken up by the cotton plant throughout the growing season to achieve these goals. Nutrient concentrations within cotton plants in the vegetative stages are considered somewhat dynamic. As a consequence, nutrient concentrations at or near early bloom have been accepted as fairly static and reliable values in diagnosing nutritional imbalances.

General cotton nutrient sufficiency levels in the most recent fully developed leaf, at first bloom, are shown below. These values are taken from the PPI publication, Plant Tissue Analysis – A Valuable Nutrient Management Tool and represent ranges from a number of published reports.

Total nutrient sufficiency ranges in uppermost mature cotton leaf blades at early bloom.