Determination of soluble selenium in soils

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Abstract
Although the selenium (Se) content in a plant is considered to reflect the content in the soil where the plant grows, the chemical form of the Se absorbed by plants from soils has not yet been well documented. Soluble Se dissolved from soils with water or aqueous salt solution is considered to be the main form available to plants and the relation between the Se content of plants and the concentration of soluble Se in soils has been studied (Olson et al. 1942; Asakawa et al. 1977). However, the number of investigations on the method of determination of soil soluble Se is limited. In a previous paper, we reported a method for the determination of trace amounts of Se using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection (Yamada et al. 1987). By this method, the total amount of Se in soils could be determined with a high reproducibility and sensibility. Therefore, the application of the HPLC method as a simple and rapid method of determination of soil soluble Se was further examined.