Free and HF-HO-extractable amino acids determined by high performance liquid chromatography in a loamy sand soil

Summary Amino acids were extracted from fertility plots of a loamy sand soil with 0.05 M HF-HCl and with a 10% ethanol solution (free amino acids) and analysed by reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The total quantities of amino-N compounds analysed were 4.4 g/g soil for the acid treatment and 22.6 g/g soil for the 10% ethanol extract. Glycine and glutamic acid were the most abundant of 15 amino-N compounds in the HF-HCl extracts, whereas glutamic acid and ornithine + NH⁺ ₄ were found in the highest concentration in the 10% ethanol extracts. The HF-HCI pretreatment is used to increase the efficiency of the extraction of soil organic matter. Although this pretreatment removed some amino acids, the acids extract less than 1% of the total amino-N content of the crude soil extracts. The pretreatment, therefore, was not overly destructive. Comparisons between the amino acids extracted from the fertility plots were not conclusive, except for glycine, which was greater in concentration in the higher fertilizer N plots of the same crop rotation.