Organic nitrogen containing compounds represent the vast majority of natural N inputs to soils and of these, proteins, peptides and amino acids are the most significant. In order to facilitate the elucidation of both the nature and rates of the processes by which these vital nutrients are transformed in soils, an understanding of their fate at a mole; level is vital. This thesis aimed to utilise soil incubation experiments with dual (¹⁵N- and ¹³C-) labelled substrates, i.e. a suite of amino acids, individual amino acids and more complex substrates, i.e. protein and cow dung, as isotopically labelled trace enabling their N and C to be followed over time. A molecular level approach was adopted which included the application of chemically and isotopically defined substrates to soil and the use of compound-specific stable isotope (N and C) analysis to trace the fate of label into the soil amino acids (and in selected cases phospholipids, C only).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:503943 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Knowles, Timothy David James |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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