The OECD 307 Guideline ‘Aerobic and Anaerobic Transformation in Soil’ and the EPA Guideline OCSPP 835.4100 ‘Aerobic Soil Metabolism’ define the degradation rate of an organic chemical in soil. These guidelines and preceding guidelines like them have been used successfully for years, but questions often still remain concerning the optimum soil size to use in the study and its effect on microbial biomass and the final degradation rate of the test substance. A soil metabolism study design based on the above guidelines was modified in this experiment by setting up treated samples with [14C]atrazine using 3 different soil aliquot sizes with two soil types. Comparisons of the rate of degradation, rate of mineralization and maintenance of microbial biomass have been made between the different soil aliquot sizes among the two different soil types. These results provide justification of the optimum soil aliquot size to be used in future soil metabolism studies.

Soil metabolism of [14C]atrazine in two soil types using various soil aliquot sizes

254th National Meeting (2017)

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