Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

Leafy vegetables with less antinutrients

A doctoral thesis at the UPNA proposes an alternative for growing leafy vegetables with less antinutrients.

Antinutrients are substances that prevent the absorption of minerals essential for humans, and the fertilizers used in crops influence the amount of antinutrients that accumulate in plants.

Nitrogen is an essential element for all living beings and is absorbed directly from the soil by plants, mainly in the form of nitrates or ammonium. Most of the nitrogen present in the soil is not available in a way that plants can take advantage of, so a large amount of nitrogenous fertilizer, mainly nitrate, is used in agriculture.

“The addition of very small doses of nitrate when fertilizing leafy vegetables with ammonium reduces the accumulation of antinutrients.”

However, the use of nitrate as a fertilizer causes a number of problems, including that it accumulates in the tissues of edible leaves, causing a significant increase in the amount of antinutrients in some species.

One way to avoid the problems associated with the use of nitrate is to use ammonium as fertilizer. But there are also difficulties in the use of this compound, which, when applied in large quantities, is toxic to most crops, and especially to leafy vegetables.

In his doctoral thesis, Aitziber Calleja Satrustegui proposes a solution to this problem. The results of their research have shown that by fertilizing leafy vegetables with ammonium, the addition of very low doses of nitrate throughout the growth period reduces the accumulation of anti-nutrients in the leaves.

These nitrate doses allow the central metabolism of plant cells cultured with ammonium to be regulated, the stress and toxicity generated by ammonium to be alleviated, and the formation of fewer antinutrients.

The author explains that this discovery, in addition to deepening the knowledge of plant physiology, has opened the door to a change in the formulation and use of nitrogenous fertilizers, and to improve the production of leafy vegetables.