Soil organic matter is one of the most important components regulating the transfer of nutrients in terrestrial ecosystems. An innate constituent of soil organic matter is that it contains carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. However, our understanding of how phosphorus transfers through soil organic matter remains limited because information on the chemical nature of soil organic phosphorus remains incomplete. It is thought that a portion of this could be comprised of phosphomonoesters (R1-C-OPO3, where R1 is an organic moiety) contained in polymeric structures of high molecular weight material.
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) is funding a PhD project to investigate the chemical nature of organic phosphorus in soils. This will involve understanding the molecular weight distribution of organic phosphorus in soil extracts and its chemical nature. The project will provide new insight on the diversity and quantitative determination of soil organic phosphorus, particularly those of: inositol phosphates, nucleic acids, phospholipids, phosphonates and ‘unknown’ phosphomonoesters. The project will involve the use of some of the most advanced and high-resolution equipment/techniques at the ETH Zürich, including: nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and high-performance liquid chromatography.