Historical Information

Julius von Sachs, the founder of modern water culture experiments, included iron in his first nutrient cultures in 1860, and Eusèbe Gris, in 1844, showed that iron was essential for curing chlorosis in vines (1,2). Sachs had already shown that iron can be taken up by leaves, and within a few years L. Rissmüller had demonstrated that foliar iron is obviously translocated by phloem out of leaves before leaf fall in European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.). The early developments in the study of iron in plant nutrition were summarized by Molisch in 1892 (3).

It was another 100 years before the principal processes of the mobilization of iron in the rhizosphere started to be understood (4–8).