Abstract
Lees and Quastel1 showed that if soils of temperate regions were submitted to an initial treatment with 4 × 10−3 M quinhydrone and afterwards rinsed with water to remove excess quinhydrone, they failed thereafter to nitrify percolated ammonium salts at the normal rate. It has since been found (Lees, unpublished results) that nitrification in these soils was inhibited by millimolar concentrations of quinhydrone allowed to percolate at the same time as ammonium salts. This latter result has now been confirmed by experiments with two soils from Trinidad : soil A, a fertile loam, and soil B, a poor heavy clay. Each soil had a pH of 7.0–7.4 and a soil organic matter content of 11–14 per cent.
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References
Lees, H., and Quastel, J. H., Biochem. J., 40, 803 (1946).
Lees, H., Plant and Soil, 1, 221 (1949).
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LEES, H., PORTEOUS, J. Effect of Quinhydrone on Soil Nitrification. Nature 165, 533 (1950). https://doi.org/10.1038/165533a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/165533a0
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