Dry Bean – Does Applying Extra Micronutrients to Dry Beans Pay?

Introduction

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Dry bean removes large quantities of macro nutrients. Micronutrients are just as essential for optimum growth and yield although they are required in much smaller quantities. Micronutrient requirements are dependent on plant uptake, soil availability and growing season conditions.

Dry bean is known to be sensitive to zinc deficiency (Viets et al., 1954). Zinc deficiency may be induced by high soil pH (Viets et al.,1957), high levels of available soil phosphorus (Boawn and Brown, 1968) or if early growing season conditions are cool and wet (Takkar and Walker, 1993).

Some bean varieties may be more susceptible than others to zinc deficiency (Brouwer et al., 1981).

There is some suggestion that zinc fertilizer promotes earlier maturity in dry bean (Blaylock, 1995), thus reducing frost risk, an important consideration for the northern prairie region's short growing season. For this reason,
it is a common practice to apply zinc fertilizer when growing dry bean in the western Canadian prairie region regardless of soil test micronutrient level.