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COMMENTS & LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

Response to "Comments on ‘Need for a Soil-based Approach in Managing Nitrogen Fertilizers for Profitable Corn Production’ and ‘Soil Organic Nitrogen Enrichment Following Soybean in an Iowa Corn-Soybean Rotation’"

National Soil Tilth Laboratory, USDA-ARS, 2150 Pammel Dr., Ames, IA 50014

^* Corresponding author (Jaynes{at}nstl.gov).

We thank Dr. Greenfield for his insightful comments and the opportunity to reiterate our understanding of our amino acid results and to correct an error in the paper by Martens et al. (2006). In the limited studies completed before Dr. Marten's untimely death, the MSA extraction method coupled with ion chromatography and pulsed amperometric detection has been found to give as good or better recoveries of amino acid-N from soils as HCl extraction (Martens and Loeffelmann, 2003). The extraction method also results in considerable NH₄⁺-N being released either from fixed or exchangeable NH₄⁺ or as a result of N-compound degradation during the extraction process. Thus, the resulting amino acid and amino sugar soil extractions are probably low estimates of their true value in soil because of a combination of incomplete extraction and losses during extraction. As pointed out in Martens and Loeffelmann (2003), the optimum extraction time for soils appears to depend on the clay fraction and particularly on differences in parent material. From their results, it is obvious that the optimum extraction time also depends on the specific amino compound, thus using a single extraction time to recover amino compounds for any soil represents a compromise between extraction efficiency and amino compound degradation.

Dr. Greenfield is correct in making the observation that the amino sugar-N values (as well as amino acid-N values) we reported were not corrected for extraction efficiency or degradation losses. Correction factors for compound degradation and imperfect extraction efficiency are often determined based on recovery of spiked model compounds. Such an approach is clearly not relevant in this case: soil amino sugars might exist in a number of chemical forms, ranging from undegraded chitin to short-chain oligomers that have been incorporated into the soil organic matter. Rather than attempting to correct for these losses, our paper (Martens et al., 2006) shows that the extraction and detection of these compounds using the MSA extraction method in a consistent manner, can be related to the crop yield variability and contribution of soil N to yield.

We would also like to correct an error in our Table 3. The values for the amino sugars were inadvertently included when computing the total amino acid content of the soils. Several other small computational errors were made in Table 3 that had the effect of decreasing the average organic N/total N ratio from 84.6 to 83.8%.

Received for publication August 18, 2006.

	REFERENCES

TOP REFERENCES

 

• Martens, D.A., D.B. Jaynes, T.S. Colvin, T.C. Kaspar, and D.L. Karlen. 2006. Soil organic nitrogen enrichment following soybean in an Iowa corn-soybean rotation. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 70:382–392.[Abstract/Free Full Text]
• Martens, D.A., and L.L. Loeffelmann. 2003. Soil amino acid composition quantified by acid hydrolysis and anion chromatography-pulsed amperometry. J. Agric. Food Chem. 51:6521–6529.[CrossRef][ISI][Medline]

This Article Full Text (PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Jaynes, D. B. Articles by Karlen, D. L. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Jaynes, D. B. Articles by Karlen, D. L. Agricola Articles by Jaynes, D. B. Articles by Karlen, D. L. Related Collections Nitrogen