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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Wooster, Ohio » Application Technology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #408714
Research Project: Sustainable Production and Pest Management Practices for Nursery, Greenhouse, and Protected Culture Crops

Location: Application Technology Research

Title: A data-driven approach for generating leaf tissue nutrient interpretation ranges for greenhouse lettuce

Author
item VEAZIE, PATRICK - North Carolina State University
item CHEN, HSUAN - North Carolina State University
item HICKS, KRISTIN - North Carolina Department Of Agriculture
item HOLLEY, JAKE - Cornell University
item EYLANDS, NATHAN - Cornell University
item MATTSON, NEIL - Cornell University
item Boldt, Jennifer
item BREWER, DEVIN - Michigan State University
item LOPEZ, ROBERTO - Michigan State University
item WHIPKER, BRIAN - North Carolina State University

Submitted to: HortScience
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/8/2023
Publication Date: 1/31/2024
Citation: Veazie, P., Chen, H., Hicks, K., Holley, J., Eylands, N., Mattson, N., Boldt, J.K., Brewer, D., Lopez, R., Whipker, B. 2024. A data-driven approach for generating leaf tissue nutrient interpretation ranges for greenhouse lettuce. HortScience. 59(3):267-277. https://doi.org/10.21273/hortsci17582-23.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21273/hortsci17582-23

Interpretive Summary: For many crops, standards have been published for leaf tissue concentrations for different essential elements. These ranges aid in identifying if a leaf tissue test for a crop indicates a deficient, sufficient, excessive, or toxic concentration of an element. These test results help growers identify how much fertilizer to apply, so that they don’t underapply or overapply. This reduces costs, reduces unnecessary applications, and improves yields by only applying the amount of fertilizer needed to produce a high-quality crop. The tissue standards, however, are only as good as the samples used to develop them. Improvements to the elemental tissue standards for lettuce were made by increasing the sample size to increase the robustness of the analysis and focusing on lettuce grown in controlled environments, like greenhouses and indoor growth rooms. These refined ranges will help growers, researchers, and laboratories better identify when lettuce plants are deficient or excessive in a particular nutrient. This will aid in determining if an observed problem is nutritional or something else, and identify what corrective measures to take to remedy the issue.

Technical Abstract: Previously, many foliar tissue recommendations for horticultural crops were based on standards developed from a small number of leaf samples to create sufficiency ranges. While providing a critical initial set of ranges, it was based on a limited set of data and therefore improvements in interpretation data are needed. This study presents a novel method to create data-driven nutrient interpretation ranges by fitting models to provide more refined ranges of deficient (lowest 2.5%), low (2.5-25%), sufficient (25-75%), high (75-97.5%), and excessive (highest 2.5%). Each element was modeled independently and subjected to Normal, Gamma, and Weibull distributions. Individual elemental distributions were selected using the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) value as well as a visual scan for accuracy in representation of each distribution’s tails and the center. The Weibull distribution best represented nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, manganese, zinc, and copper, while the Gamma distribution best represented magnesium, sulfur, iron, and boron. Utilizing the selected distributions, we propose a refined set of nutrient evaluation ranges for greenhouse grown lettuce. These refined standards will aid growers and technical specialist in more accurately interpreting leaf tissue sample data.