Chloroform fumigation and the release of soil nitrogen: A rapid direct extraction method to measure microbial biomass nitrogen in soil

Abstract

A new “direct extraction” method for measuring soil microbial biomass nitrogen (biomass N) is described. The new method (fumigation-extraction) is based on CHC1 3 fumigation, followed by immediate extraction with 0.5 M K 2SO 4 and measurement of total N released by CHC1 3 in the soil extracts. The amounts of NH 4-N and total N extracted by K 2SO 4 immediately after fumigation increased with fumigation time up to 5 days. Total N released by CHC1 3 after 1 day fumigation (1 day CHC1 3-N) and after 5 days fumigation (5 day CHC1 3-N) were positively correlated with the flush of mineral N (F N) in 37 soils that had been fumigated, the fumigant removed and the soils incubated for 10 days (fumigation-incubation). The regression equations were 1 day CHC1 3-N = (0.79 ± 0.022) F N and 5 day CHC1 3-N = (1.01 ± 0.027) F N, both regressions accounting for 92% of the variance in the data. In field soils previously treated with 15N-labelled fertilizer, the amounts of labelled N, measured after fumigation-extraction, were very similar to the amounts of labelled N mineralized during fumigation-incubation; both were about 4 times as heavily labelled as the soil N as a whole. These results suggest that fumigation-extraction and fumigation-incubation both measure the same fraction of the soil organic N (probably the cytoplasmic component of the soil microbial biomass) and that measurement of the total N released by CHC1 3 fumigation for 24 h provides a rapid method for measuring biomass N.