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Jay Howes

Jay Howes

Dr Jay Howes is Technical Specialist - Soil Science at PGG Wrightson in New Zealand, a Massey University PhD soil scientist who appears on the Blue Shed Diary podcast.

Sep 21, 2026

6:54
Do you want to elaborate a little bit on that?
6:57
Yes, so legumes are slightly different to sort of non-legumes, so all plants need molybdenum.
7:04
However, legumes tend to need quite a bit more molybdenum than non-legumes.
7:10
They use it for, the rhizoma itself uses it to fix N2 gas out of the atmosphere, and they also use it in metabolic processes to form proteins inside their body.
7:22
And, you know, just as an aside, If a plant needs, let's just say a 10 ton crop of pasture needs 450 kilos of nitrogen, as we said before, that same crop may need less than probably three milligrams of molybdenum.
7:48
So we're talking, you know, out of the 16 essential plants, essential nutrients that a plant needs to get out of the soil, nitrogen is the highest and molybdenum is the lowest, but can have a detrimental effect on definitely legume growth if it's deficient.
10:07
What do you think of that? Is it a myth or is there a grain of truth there?
10:11
I think it's definitely a grain of truth.

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