Amino acid composition of soil peptides chromatographed by high performance liquid chromatography on C18 and C8 columns

Summary Low molecular weight fractions (LMW; <5000 daltons) of organic matter were isolated from three soils by a mild extraction procedure and gel-permeation chromatography. The peptides present in the LMW soil extracts were separated on a Whatman Partisphere C18 and a Beckman Ultrapore C8 column by reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The peptide fractions were collected, acid hydrolyzed, and analyzed for amino acid composition. The C8 bonded-phase column gave better separation of the LMW soil peptide material than the C18 column. The total quantities of amino acids released from LMW peptides by acid hydrolysis were greater than the quantities released by immobilized protease hydrolysis (Warman and Isnor 1990). Total soil N present in the form of LMW peptides in these three soils ranged from 4 to 15%. The total recovery of peptide amino acid-N showed little difference between the C18 and C8 columns for two of the soils tested.