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  • Soils, Sec 1 • Soil Organic Matter Dynamics and Nutrient Cycling • Research Article
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Occurrence and abundance of carbohydrates and amino compounds in sequentially extracted labile soil organic matter fractions

Journal of Soils and Sediments volume 16, pages 2375–2384 (2016)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

The study aimed to describe the carbohydrates and amino compounds content in soil, the light fraction (LF), the >53 μm particulate organic matter (POM), and the mobile humic acid (MHA) fraction and to find out whether the carbohydrates and amino compounds can be used to explain the origin of SOM fractions.

Materials and methods

Soil samples were collected from two agricultural fields managed under organic farming in southern Italy. The LF, the POM, and the MHA were sequentially extracted from each soil sample then characterized. Seven neutral sugars and 19 amino compounds (amino acids and amino sugars) were determined in each soil sample and its correspondent fractions.

Results and discussion

The MHA contained less carbohydrate than the LF or the POM but its carbohydrates, although dominated by arabinose, were relatively with larger microbial contribution as revealed by the mannose/xylose ratio. The amino compounds were generally less in the LF or the POM than in the MHA, while the fungal (aspartic and serine) and bacterial (alanine and glycine) amino acids were larger in the MHA than in the LF or the POM, underlining the microbial contribution to the MHA. Results from both sites indicated that total carbohydrates content decreased moving from the LF (younger fraction) to the MHA (older fraction), which seems to follow a decomposition continuum of organic matter in the soil-plant system.

Conclusions

The study showed that the MHA is a labile humified fraction of soil C due to its content of carbohydrates and concluded that the content of carbohydrates and amino compounds in the LF, the POM and the MHA can depict the nature of these fractions and their cycling pattern and response to land management.

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Acknowledgments

This work was carried out in the framework of the BIO.INNOVA project financed by the Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali, Italy. The authors acknowledge the Apulia Region for using scientific instrumentation acquired with RELA-VALBIOR project. The authors are grateful to anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on the manuscript draft.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. USDA–ARS, National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

    Hamada M. Abdelrahman, Dan C. Olk & Dana Dinnes

  2. Soil Science Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, Giza, 12613, Egypt

    Hamada M. Abdelrahman

  3. CREA–SCA, Unità di Ricerca per i Sistemi Colturali degli Ambienti Caldo-Aridi, Bari, Italy

    Domenico Ventrella

  4. DiSSPA–Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”, 70126, Bari, Italy

    Teodoro Miano & Claudio Cocozza

Authors
  1. Hamada M. Abdelrahman
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  2. Dan C. Olk
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  3. Dana Dinnes
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  4. Domenico Ventrella
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  5. Teodoro Miano
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  6. Claudio Cocozza
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hamada M. Abdelrahman.

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Responsible editor: Francisco Javier González-Vila

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Abdelrahman, H.M., Olk, D.C., Dinnes, D. et al. Occurrence and abundance of carbohydrates and amino compounds in sequentially extracted labile soil organic matter fractions. J Soils Sediments 16, 2375–2384 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-016-1437-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-016-1437-y

Keywords

  • Light fraction
  • Mobile humic acid
  • Organic farming
  • Particulate organic matter
  • SOM sequential extraction