Abstract

Plant roots and soil microorganisms contain significant quantities of low molecular weight (MW) phosphorylated nucleosides and sugars. Consequently.. upon death these can represent a significant input of organic-P to the soil. Some of these organic-P substrates must first be dephosphorylated by phosphatases before being assimilated by the soil microbial community while others can be taken up directly from soil solution. To determine whether sorption or phosphatase activity was limiting the bioavailability of low MW organic-P in soil we compared the microbial uptake and C mineralization of a range of C-14-labeled organic-P substrates [glucose-6-phosphate, adenosine monophosphate (AMP), adenosine diphosphate (ADP) and adenosine triphosphate (ATP)] to that of the parent compounds (adenosine and glucose). In a fertile grassland soil we showed that at low organic-P substrate concentrations (< 0.5 mM) phosphatase activity did not limit microbial uptake or mineralization in comparison to their non-phosphorylated counterparts. However, at high substrate concentrations (1-10 mM) the mineralization of the organic-P compounds was significantly lower than that of the nonphosphorylated compounds suggesting that phosphatase activity or microbial transporter capacity limited bioavailability. Sorption to the solid phase followed the series glucose < adenosine < G-6-P < AMP < ADP=ATP. However, sorption of the organic-P compounds to the solid phase did not appear to greatly affect bioavailability. The high adenosine mineralization capacity of the microbial biomass suggests that nucleosides may represent a significant source of C and N to the soil microbial biomass. We conclude that at low organic-P substrate concentrations typical of those in soil, neither phosphatase activity nor sorption greatly limits their bioavailability. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

dissolved organic nitrogen; extracellular enzyme activity; nutrient cycling; mineralization; organic phosphorus; phosphatases; sorption

Published in

Soil Biology and Biochemistry
2007, Volume: 39, number: 5, pages: 1213-1217
Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

SLU Authors

• Fransson, Ann-Mari

  • Lund University

UKÄ Subject classification

Soil Science
Microbiology
Ecology


Publication Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soilbio.2006.11.014

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/51824