A Simple Method to Determine Soil Microbial Biomass Carbon by Facilitating Gaseous Diffusion of Chloroform into Pores

Chloroform fumigation and extraction (CFE) has been a widely accepted method for quantifying overall sizeof soil microbial community, which is a key indicator to assess the quality and health of a given soil. However,the standard procedure of CFE requires careful operations to generate enough CHCl3 vapors and flush theminto soil pores. We suggest a new simple alternative for facilitating gaseous diffusion of CHCl3 moleculesunder ambient air pressure conditions. The microbial C values by the new approach, examined for severalfarmland, forest, and grassland soils, coincided well with those obtained by the standard CFE. The cell lysisand extraction coefficient was also close to that of standard CFE and much higher than that evaluated for aliquid-based CHCl3 cell lysis. KCI Citation Count: 0