Evaluation of selective dissolution extractants in soil chemistry and mineralogy by differential X-ray diffraction

Selective dissolution analysis is widely used to separate various soil minerals (e.g. oxides and oxyhydroxides of Al and Fe, allophanes, phyllosilicates) from each other. Although a wide variety of reagents has been used for some of these determinations, few rigorous comparative studies have been attempted. Too often, reagents used to extract particular soil components are evaluated using geological or other specimens that may bear little resemblance to soil minerals formed by pedogenic processes; the investigations of Borggaard (1982) and Chao & Zhou (1983) are two recent examples of such an approach. Insufficient use has been made of difference infrared spectra (Wada & Greenland, 1970) obtained from soil samples.