Physiological plant disorder diseases. Improving drainage will help to alleviate this problem. Hail can cause damage to soft skinned fruits, and may also allow brown rot or other fungi to penetrate the plant. Brown spot markings or lines on one side of a mature apple are indicative of a spring hailstorm. Plants affected by salt stress are able to take water from soil, due to an osmotic imbalance between soil and plant. Poor growth and a variety of disorders such as leaf discolouration (chlorosis) can be caused by a shortage of one or more plant nutrients. Poor plant uptake of a nutrient from
Plant defense against herbivory change their defenses in response to changes in nutrients. For example, if plants are grown in low-nitrogen conditions, then these plants will implement a defensive strategy composed of constitutive carbon-based defenses. If nutrient levels subsequently increase, by for example the addition of fertilizers, these carbon-based defenses will decrease. The growth rate hypothesis, also known as the "resource availability hypothesis", states that defense strategies are determined by the inherent growth rate of the plant, which is in turn determined by the resources available to the plant. A major assumption is that available resources are the limiting factor in determining the maximum