Nationwide analysis of greenhouse effluents reveals robustness of crops as a modulator of ambient stoichiometry

Crops are key players in agroecological nutrient dynamics. While the environmental impact of introduced agronomic nutrients has been widely studied, crop traits as modulators of environmental stoichiometry in agroecosystems have not been systematically considered. To observe crop-driven stoichiometric variation, we assessed nutrient variability of greenhouse substrate culture effluents on a nationwide scale in South Korea using 150 effluent samples collected from 10 different geographical locations over two consecutive pepper, tomato and cucumber growing seasons. We found that nutrient concentrations varied widely among crops, with cucumber effluents showing significantly lower quartile ranges (e.g., NO 3 − : 12.4–18.0 mM) compared to tomato and pepper (NO 3 − : 21.2–30.4 mM). However, when converted to molar fractions, the distributions between crops overlapped (NO 3 − molar fraction qu…