1. Determination of Soil Available Phosphorus using the Olsen and Mehlich 3 Methods for Greek Soils Having Variable Amounts of Calcium Carbonate.
- Author
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Iatrou, M., Papadopoulos, A., Papadopoulos, F., Dichala, O., Psoma, P., and Bountla, A.
- Subjects
PHOSPHORUS in soils ,CALCIUM carbonate ,CALCAREOUS soils ,COLORIMETRY ,SOIL testing - Abstract
The Mehlich 3 method for the determination of available phosphorus (P) is less laborious compared to the Olsen method and provides the advantage of multielement analysis. However, in Greece the Olsen P method is currently used because of its suitability for calcareous soils. The aims of this study were to compare (a) the Mehlich 3 and Olsen methods for 200 soils having different levels of pH and calcium carbonate and (b) Mehlich 3 colorimetric and Mehlich 3 inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analysis for 17 acidic and 23 alkaline soils. The correlation of Mehlich 3 P and Olsen P methods, excluding soils with pH less than 5 and soils with calcium carbonate levels from 10.3 to 48.3%, resulted in a linear slope of 0.24 and r2of 0.82, and thus for this range of soils the Mehlich 3 test provided a more reliable measurement of P compared to the Olsen method. This study confirms also previous results that show that Mehlich 3 ICP test measures more P compared to Mehlich 3 colorimetry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2014
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