Investigation of Extractants for Soil Carbohydrates Extraction

Determination of carbohydrates in soil requires prior extraction and numerous extraction methods were suggested for this purpose. Three methods and five extractants were applied in order to extract carbohydrate fraction in three soil types; forest, clayey and saline soils. The extraction methods were: 1) shaken in a plane rotary shaking machine for 16 h 2) heated in steam-bath for 2.5 h and 3) heated in oven for 24 h and extractants included 1) 0.5 M HCL, (2) 0.25 M H2SO4, 3) 0.5 M H2SO4, 4) 0.5 M K2SO4 and 5) distilled water. Carbohydrate content in soil was measured by phenol-sulphuric acid method. The addition of phenol to the extracted solution of HCl caused to milky precipitation. Therefore, this extractant can not be used for carbohydrate extraction in the phenol-sulphuric acid spectroscopic method. The results showed that in all soils and in the shaker extraction method, carbohydrate content was lower than in the oven and steam-bath extraction methods. In the forest and saline soils, the extracted carbohydrate content was not significantly different among the oven and steam-bath methods. For the clayey soil, the carbohydrate content was higher in the oven method than that of the steam-bath method. In all soils, the extracted carbohydrate by 0.5 M H2SO4 extractant was greater than those of other extractants. In the forest and saline soils, the extracted carbohydrate by distilled water was lower than those of other extractants. Using steam-bath method (for the forest and saline soils) and oven method (for the clayey soil) with 0.5 M H2SO4 extracted the highest amount of carbohydrates.