Lignin Decomposition in Soils

Authors

J. B. Bartlett, Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station
F. B. Smith, Iowa Agricultural Experiment StationFollow
P. E. Brown, Iowa Agricultural Experiment StationFollow

Document Type

Research

Abstract

Most of our agricultural plants contain from 10-20 per cent of a complex material, called "lignin." It is generally accepted that the rigidity of plant stems is due to this lignin which is found in the walls of the xylem cells. Thus, all of the plant residues added to soils contain an appreciable quantity of lignin. The exact chemical structure of this complex is as yet undetermined. In fact, it is even doubtful whether we can ever obtain one chemical formula which can be said to represent lignin. For the soils worker, however, the importance of lignin lies in the fact that its rate of decomposition in the soil is much slower than that of any of the other constituents of plant residues, and that as a consequence we have a "relative accumulation" of lignin in the soil.

Publication Date

1937

Journal Title

Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science

Volume

44

Issue

1

First Page

97

Last Page

101

Copyright

©1937 Iowa Academy of Science, Inc.

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Bartlett, J. B.; Smith, F. B.; and Brown, P. E. (1937) "Lignin Decomposition in Soils," Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science, 44(1), 97-101.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/pias/vol44/iss1/15