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Extraction of Potassium from Soils by Sulfuric Acid¹

ABSTRACT

Methods of extracting potassium from soils by use of sulfuric acid have been developed. The amounts of K extracted from several Ohio and New York soils by these methods were compared with those extracted by neutral 1N NH₄OAc and boiling 1N HNO₃ methods as means of furnishing a reliable index to the "plant-available" K of soils.

Using H₂SO₄ method 1, amounts of K were extracted which were highly correlated with amounts of K extracted from soils by cropping. The correlation coefficient thus obtained was significantly different at the 1% level from the coefficients obtained by using ammonium acetate or boiling nitric acid.

The sulfuric acid methods developed are simple to use and, since an exact quantity of heat energy is furnished to the soil extraction system, these methods theoretically furnish a means of releasing a constant amount of non-exchangeable K, due to breakdown of primary and secondary minerals, as well as the exchangeable K from a particular soil.

¹ Journal article No. 29–57. Ohio Agr. Exp. Sta. contribution from the Department of Agronomy. Acknowledgement is made to the American Potash Institute for fellowship funds which helped make this study possible. Presented before Div. II, Soil Science Society of America, Aug. 16, 1955 at Davis, Calif.

² Formerly Graduate Fellow, now Research Instructor, North Carolina State College; and formerly Assistant Professor, now Assistant Chemist in Soils and Plant Nutrition, University of California, Riverside, respectively.

Received for publication May 13, 1957. Accepted for publication June 17, 1957.