222 Salt Proportions [420 
A STUDY OF SALT PROPORTIONS IN A NUTRIENT 
SOLUTION CONTAINING CHLORIDE, AS RELATED 
TO THE GROWTH OF YOUNG WHEAT PLANTS 
By 8. F. TREeneaseE 
Chlorine has been considered an unnecessary element in the 
nutrition of most plants, but it seems to have produced a 
beneficial influence in certain cases that have been recorded. 
There is some practical as well as scientific interest in the 
question thus raised, since potassium chloride is frequently 
used as an agricultural fertilizer, and the influence of the 
chlorine thus put into the soil may not be without impor- 
tance. In the experiments of which this is a preliminary 
report the chlorine ion was introduced into nutrient solutions 
that already contained all the essential elements usually ab- 
sorbed by plant roots. These essential elements (N, 8, P, 
Ca, Mg, K, and Fe) may be supplied to the young wheat 
plants as a nutrient solution containing the three salts 
Ca(NO,)., MgSO,, and KH,PO,, with a trace of iron as 
FePO, To introduce chlorine, KCl was added to the 
list just given, thus making a 4-salt solution. A solu- 
tion made from these four salts was used by Knop and 
Nobbe, and Grafe* recommends these same salts as most gen- 
erally useful. Detmer* employed one set of proportions of 
these four salts, and this solution has been designated by Tot- 
tingham * as Detmer’s solution. In the experiments consid- 
ered in this paper the same general methods were used as were 
*Grafe, V. ‘ Erniihrungsphysiologisches Praktikum der hodheren 
Pflanzen.” Berlin, 1914. 
*Detmer, W., “ Practical plant physiology.” Translated by S. A. 
Moor. London, 1298. . 
*Tottingham, W. E., “A quantitative chemical and physiological 
study of nutrient solutions for plant cultures.” Physiol Res. 1: 
133-245. 1914. 
