Loss of Available Phosphate in Soil due to Micro-Organisms

Abstract

WHILE there is a considerable fund of knowledge on the physical and chemical factors affecting the loss of available phosphate, or ‘phosphate fixation’, in soils, there is very little published work on the part played by soil micro-organisms in the process. Phosphorus can either be utilized by micro-organisms as cell substance and hence locked up temporarily, or permanently, in much the same way as nitrogen, or according to unconfirmed work by Rudakov¹, phosphate can be reduced to phosphine and lost from the soil as such. In order to assess the importance and magnitude of these possible processes, some preliminary work on the problem has been carried out.