Abstract
IN the course of structural investigations into the organic matter component of soil, it became clear that the fulvic acid solutions1 (the alkali-soluble fractions of humus not precipitated by acid) contained a high proportion of their soluble organic matter as a polymer, consisting of a carbon skeleton highly substituted by carboxyl groups. The solutions also normally contained peptide and polysaccharide mixtures or complexes which could be removed almost entirely by fractionation on charcoal2, a technique which allowed the isolation of the polycarboxylic acid. Brown acidic polymers virtually identical with those found in the fulvic acid solution were recovered from podzol Bh horizon humus by extraction of the soil with dilute mineral acid or trisodium citrate solutions pH 7.0) followed by dialysis.
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ANDERSON, H., RUSSELL, J. Possible relationship between soil fulvic acid and polymaleic acid. Nature 260, 597 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1038/260597a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/260597a0
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