Nutrients are essential to plant growth and development. Primary plant nutrients include carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorus; while secondary nutrients include calcium and sulfur.
Micronutrients such as boron, chlorine, iron, magnesium, manganese selenium and zinc can be thought of as trace nutrients.
Vitamins
Vitamins are organic compounds (or group of molecules called vitamers) essential for normal metabolic functioning of higher organisms, with most vitamins being essential in small quantities for daily life. Most vitamins cannot be produced within an organism itself and must instead come from food sources; their discovery occurred due to investigations into nutritional deficiencies like scurvy (vitamin C), rickets and megaloblastic anemias (vitamin B12/folate) or pellagra (niacin).
Vitamins play an integral part in our health, from supporting immune response to building bones. Their importance to our wellbeing has led the Institute of Medicine to create Recommended Dietary Intakes. Vitamins can be divided into two large categories: water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins; each recognized vitamin typically goes by its initials rather than chemical name (see Online Table 3 for details). For instance, beta-carotene is one such fat-soluble vitamin found in leafy green vegetables, carrots, dark orange and yellow fruits and vegetables, livers fortified milks as well.
Minerals
Minerals are inorganic solids that have a specific chemical composition and internal arrangement of atoms, as well as an ordered external structure known as crystal form or morphology. Minerals also possess specific chemical formulae; for instance, quartz (silicon dioxide) has one such as SiO2. Minerals can be classified by their crystalline structure or their ability to express cleavage, in which solid surfaces break open into flat surfaces with geometric forms at regular intervals.
Minerals can be identified by their colour, appearance and physical characteristics such as specific gravity (the density of a mineral compared to water), tenacity and magnetism; their refraction index and double refraction can also provide clues.
Minerals are vitally important in supporting both our innate immune system and adaptive immunity components, including adaption. Furthermore, minerals play an essential role in maintaining an ideal balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory regulation of cells – depending on such minerals as sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium to nerve signalling while iron and zinc help form red blood cell formation.
Amino Acids
Amino acids are organic compounds containing both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups, and are used by our bodies as building blocks. Of the 20 amino acids needed by our bodies, 9 are essential (l-valine, l-leucine, l-isoleucine, l-lysine, l-threonine, methionine, histidine and tryptophan), with nonessential ones such as asparagine, aspartic acid cysteine glutamine glycine proline serine etc.
Protein-building molecules serve an array of crucial purposes. Leucine can activate muscle protein synthesis after exercise, isoleucine can fuel and repair muscles and lysine can improve immune system functionality while helping cells absorb glucose more easily. Tryptophan is an amino acid precursor of serotonin, an important neurotransmitter for sleep and mood regulation. Your body can produce nonessential amino acids itself but cannot create essential ones; so they must come from food sources. Amino acids can be produced using various processes, including extraction, chemical synthesis and fermentation. All of these methods have been continuously improved to reduce production costs and increase quality; in turn this has increased global amino acid sales significantly and their annual rate of expansion now exceeds 7% annually.
Nutrient-Like Compounds
Some microorganisms and plants cannot synthesize certain essential metabolites for their survival, necessitating adequate amounts from diet as essential nutrients. These essential dietary ingredients must be consumed regularly.
These essential nutrients include organic compounds such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C), which do not belong to the vitamin family because organisms cannot synthesize them themselves and must therefore obtain it through daily consumption of a set amount of milligram or microgram amounts from food sources; other organic compounds found in foods, like choline and carotenoids have also been considered essential nutrients.
Other chemicals important for our health that fall outside the realm of vitamins, minerals, or amino acids include fiber, phytochemicals (e.g. phenolics and alkaloids), as well as minor food components like xenobiotics or contaminants; all are present in food but consumed at lower quantities than macronutrients and micronutrients.
