Can acidification associated with nitrification increase available soil phosphate or reduce the rate of phosphate fixation?

Abstract

It is often proposed that soil acidification by microorganisms dissolves unavailable soil phosphates, especially crystalline Ca phosphates. Unavailable phosphates, it is suggested, could thus become available to crops. Microorganisms that oxidize one ammonium ion to one nitrate ion excrete two protons into the soil solution. In the present study, this universal biological process of soil acidification was used to measure, in neutral and calcareous soils, the effect of acidification on available soil phosphate and on the rate of phosphate fixation when water-soluble phosphate fertilizers are added to soils. During nitrification the Ca2+ and Mg2+ ion concentrations in soil solutions increase but the phosphate ion concentration remains constant. The excreted protons preferentially dissolve soil Ca and Mg carbonates. Soil Ca phosphates are not dissolved; they remain unavailable. When P fertilizers were applied, the rate of fixation of phosphate ions was not slowed down by acidification associated with nitrification. This biological acidification may have a long term effect, over many years, on the slow accumulation of available phosphate in soils under native grasslands, but it cannot have a significant effect on the availability of soil P under intensive agricultural practices.