Electrolytes! No you don’t need to be filling your boom sprays with the latest and greatest sports drink, you simply need to look at the concentrations and ratios of Sodium, Calcium, K, & Mg in your soil.

Electrolytes are able to carry an electric charge, this is how EC tests work; the more electrolyte in a solution, the more charge it can carry, hence a higher EC in soils high in sodium.

Plants are like a bag of water (like us). Their bag has a lot more holes in it, and they’re stuck where they are -they can’t duck down to the servo for a Powerade. They need the right concentration, and balance, of electrolytes to stay pumped up.

When people dehydrate it’s not so much the lack of water, its the change in electrolyte concentrations and balances. The exact same applies for plants.

Stomata are the pores in the leaf that the plant uses to take in CO2 to use for photosynthesis (which lets water out unfortunately), and also to release water to cool itself via evaporation. The stomata open and close by using electrolytes to pump up and let down the cells.

In dry land cropping it is becoming increasingly important to manage electrolytes so that the plant is able to efficiently manage its water.