EVALUATION OF SOIL MICROBIAL BIOMASS CARBON AS A SOIL QUALITY INDICATOR IN AGRICULTURAL CONTAMINATED SOILS IN CENTRAL CHILE Verdejo J.; Donoso P.; Rojas C.; Yañez C.; Neaman A. Escuela de Agronomía, Facultad de Ciencias Agronómicas y de los Alimentos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Quillota, Chile
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INTRODUCTION Microbiological properties have been used to evaluate soil quality in metal-contaminated soils. However, the use of microbiological properties in soil quality criteria presents several difficulties. The presence of various contaminants in the soil and unavoidable differences in the physicochemical soil properties, along different sampling areas, cause difficulties in the interpretation of results.
OBJECTIVE Separate confounding factors that affect microbiological properties
Figure 1. Bacterial Biomass-C as function of electrical conductivity (EC), soil total Cu concentration (CuT) and soil soluble Cu concentration (CuS). The surface is obtained using a distanceweighted least square smoothing.
MATERIALS AND METHODS 150
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Catemu and Puchuncaví reported different biomass-C responses mainly due to different pH values (Tukey test, p
