Photo credit: Edwin Remsberg and USDA-SARE
The Cornell Comprehensive Assessment of Soil Health Team developed a new procedure to extract soil protein, which is an indicator of the potential pool of available organic nitrogen (N). The new soil health indicator updates previous methods to more broadly include proteins from a wide range of sources.
Protein content influences the ability of the soil to store N and make it available during the growing season. It is well associated with overall soil health status because of its indication of biological and chemical soil health, in particular, the quality of the soil organic matter (SOM).
A more comprehensive understanding of soil health status, through identifying field-specific constraints, can better guide farmer’s soil and nitrogen management decisions.
The new soil protein extraction protocol (Autoclaved Citrate Extractable Protein Index) is rapid, inexpensive, and requires a small sample. Further work is needed to better understand the role of soil protein and how this method relates to more established methods.