Re: [APD] is Chloride Bad For Plants (CaCl2)

[Roger Miller <roger at spinn_net>]

On Friday 06 January, Derek wrote:

> Is chloride bad for plants?

No.  In tiny amounts chloride is an essential nutrient.  Plants use it in 
larger amounts then required and it can be found in some healthy aquatic 
plant tissue at fairly high concentrations.   Chloride is ubiquitous in 
nature and I doubt there is a living thing on earth that doesn't happily 
coexist with chloride; it is biologically benign.

When salinity problems occur chloride is often part of the problem, but the 
problem is not unique to chloride.  Anything that reaches sufficiently high 
concentrations will cause the same problems.

Aside from salinity issues I have no idea where the idea came from that 
chloride was a problem for plants.  At one time the problems seemed to arise 
from the similarity in the words "chloride" (benign) and "chlorine" (nasty).  
Now there seems to be someone or something else that is generating the idea.

Calcium chloride is an excellent (and very inexpensive) source of calcium.  As 
with all things used for dosing or reconstituting, I would make sure that the 
balance of components are reasonable before I decided to use it.  But then, 
that comes from my inclination toward balance and isn't really supported by 
research.


Roger Miller 
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