A Low-Cost Assembly for Extraction of Hot Calcium Chloride Extractable Boron from Soil Samples
2022
Srivastava, P.C. | Pachauri, S.P.
Among micronutrients, boron (B) occupies a prime place next to zinc (Zn) in Indian Agriculture. Acidic soils, coarse-textured soils subjected to leaching in high rainfall areas, and calcareous soils are likely to be deficient in B (Srivastava and Gupta 1996). According to an estimate based on soil testing of more than two lakh samples drawn from 508 districts of India indicated that 23.2 percent of soil samples are deficient in B (Shukla et al. 2019). Though there are several methods for the analysis of B in soils yet hot water-soluble B (Berger and Truog 1940; Gupta 1967) or dilute CaCl2 extractable B (Cartwright et al. 1983; Adams et al. 1991) are widely adopted for different soils all over the World (Diana 2008). The assembly adopted for the extraction of hot water soluble or dilute CaCl2 extractable B is costly as it requires the use of low B glass or quartz boiling flask equipped with a condenser tube for refluxing (Parker and Gardner 1981) which generally poses difficulty in handling and maintenance. Schuppli (1986) used a Teflon Erlenmeyer flask (125 ml) capacity attached to a Teflon reflux condenser to extract hot water-soluble B from soils, and an asbestos mat was placed between the hot plate and the flask to prevent damage to the Teflon flask. This publication proposes a low-cost assembly to extract hot water-soluble or hot CaCl2 extractable B in soils.
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