Determination of glomalin in agriculture and forest soils by near-infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

Determining and characterizing soil organic matter (SOM) cheaply and reliably can help to support decisions concerning sustainable land management and climate policy. Glomalin was recommended as one of possible indicators of SOM quality. Extracting glomalin from and determining it in soils using classical chemical methods is too complicated and therefore near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was studied as a method of choice for the determination of glomalin. Representative sets of 84 different soil samples from arable land and grasslands and 75 forest soils were used to develop NIRS calibration models. The parameters of the NIRS calibration model (R = 0.90 for soils from arable land and grasslands and R = 0.94 for forest soils) proved that glomalin can be determined in air-dried soils by NIRS with adequate trueness and precision simultaneously with determination of nitrogen and oxidizable carbon.