Mineralization of C and N from microbial biomass in paddy soil

Soil samples of paddy fields with different fertilizer managements in Yamaguchi Agricultural Experiment Station, Japan were used to investigate the contribution of microbial biomass to the pool of mobile plant nutrients in paddy soil. The quantities of nutrients mobilized in soils which had been fumigated or dried were closely related to the quantities available in freshly killed biomass. A "KN-factor" (28 days) of 0.24 for the proportion of total N mineralized from dead biomass in paddy soils was obtained. It was observed that the C to N ratio mineralized from freshly killed biomass by chloroform fumigation of paddy soils was nearly 10 under aerobic conditions. For an approximate calculation of biomass C from the flush-N by chloroform fumigation of paddy soils, the equations of (B = 33 Fn, 10 days) and (B = 26 Fn, 28 days) were indicated. In oven-dried (70°C, 24 h) and rewetted soils, about 66% of N was mineralized from the freshly killed biomass during 28 days of incubation and the remaining 34% was derived from non-biomass organic matter of paddy soils.