Determination of enzymatic activities using a miniaturized system as a rapid method to assess soil quality

2014

Soil quality determination requires the analysis of a number of soil attributes using different approaches. In recent years, one of the most promising approaches has been the determination of enzymatic activities. Generally, only a few enzymes have been analysed and related with other parameters, such as total carbon, nitrogenous content or microbial biomass carbon. The aim of this work was to investigate the possible use of the API ZYM strip, a semi-quantitative miniaturised system that determines 19 enzymatic activities, to study soil quality. To this end, we tested the system in different soil types, including albicArenosols, mollicLeptosols, rendzicLeptosols, haplicLeptosols, and calcar…