Abstract
The previous paper 4 showed that chlorophyll and its derivatives (called 'chlorophyll-type compounds') enter the soil in many plant and other materials ; how much enters the soil depends not only on the amounts in the materials, but also on the activity of plant tissue enzymes, which can destroy chlorophyll rapidly. Only one account has been found of chlorophyll decomposition in soil, by Simonart et al .5, who used C14-labelled chlorophyll b. After 30 days in soil, only a tenth of the radioactivity was lost from this chlorophyll. It decomposed more slowly than glucose, hemicellulose or cellulose (as measured by the evolution of radioactive carbon dioxide). Chlorophylls a and b decompose through separate although analogous series of degradation products. For example, pheophytins a and b are derived from chlorophylls a and b respectively. A probable sequence for the decomposition of chlorophyll (adapted from Vallentyne 6) is as follows:
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