Undergrads help unravel mysteries of soils NEWARK, Del - Basic laboratory research is usually considered the province ot graduate students, or scientists with advanced degrees Two un dergraduates in the University ot Delaware's department of plant science are getting an early taste of the challenges and frustrations involved in doing this kind of work Right now senior candidates for degrees with distinction Phil Jardine and Mark Loux are busy in a laboratory in the college ot agriculture s new research/teaching tacility, Wornlow Hall, trying to tigure out how crop nutrients like potassium and boron interact with the soil What they discover may some day help farmers fertilize crops more efficiently, thus saving money and increasing yields SOLVING POTASSIUM PUZZLE - University of Delaware senior Phil Jardme adjusts flow of solution through fraction collector he's using to find out how potassium behaves on Delaware croplands. Jardine s project concerns the rate at which potassium tK) ions become bonded and released from two typical Delaware soils—one a sandy coastal plain soil common to Sussex county, the other a loamy sand found on many northern Delaware farms To determine the rate of bonding or adsorption, Jardine passes a potassium solution through a small amount of soil at a measured rate and collects it in test tubes He then analyzes samples ot this leachate from each tube for the amount of K present This tells him how much K has been adsorbed by the soil Once he can detect no further absorption, he reverses the process, using a calcium chloride solution The calcium ions replace the potassium which became bonded to the soil during the earlier proceduie, releasing it back into solution Once again, he measures the leachate to determine the rate ot K. release It takes him about a day to perform the entire procedure To save time and achieve greater accuracy, Jardine uses a fraction collector and a peristaltic pump, which automatically con trols the flow of solution into the test tubes To find out how much K remains in the leachate after the soil/K reactions take place, he uses a highly sophisticated piece ot equipment called an atomic ad sorption spectrophotometer—AA tor short This directly measures the concentration of K in solution At one time in his work last fall he placed the fraction collector in an incubator and ran the ex periment at three different tem peratures—o degrees C (32 degrees F), 25 degrees C (77 degrees Fj, and 40 degrees C (104 degrees Ft—to find out how these affect soil/K interactions He found that in a waimei en vironment, the rale ot reaction was much faster This agrees with field observations by university soil chemists and suggests that as the weather warms up in the spring, there’s more available K in the ground than there is in late fall when many farmers take their soil samples All this data on the rate ol K adsorption and release at different temperatures makes it possible to determine the thermodynamics or bonding strength of K in a par ticular soil This, in turn, provides information that enables soil scientists to predict what potassium leaching losses will be from that soil (Turn to Page B 8) * 'j££3g*\i ml Wk^rn 1 : LOOKING ERS . jux, a senior doing basic research on behavior of boron in the soil, shown here using atomic adsorption spectrophotometer AA for short in U. of D.’s new teaching/research facility, Wornlow Hall. L.B. WHITE IfcSSf-d HEATERS g fy^ Swine Systems %pj\ FARMER BOY Ma. 457 E MAIN AVE , MYERSTOWN. PA 17067 'A Mile East of Myerstown 717-866-7565
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