1382 / 2024-09-26 10:03:21
Acidified Potassium Iodide Reduction Method: A Rapid and Precise Method for Measuring Microbial Nitrification Rate Across Environments
Isotope tracing,Potassium Iodide reduction,Membrane inlet mass spectrometer,Ammonia oxidation rate,Nitrite oxidation rate
Session 3 - The nitrogen cycle towards a sustainable ocean: from microbes to global biogeochemistry
Abstract Accepted
Developing an accurate and well-established method for measuring nitrification rate is important to understand the role of nitrification process in the nitrogen cycle across environments. Here, we present a rapid and more accurate method to determine the ammonia oxidation rate (Ra) and the nitrite oxidation rate (Rn) simultaneously using stable isotope tracing and acidified potassium iodide reduction (SIT-APIR). 15NH4+ was added to the incubation as a tracer to measure the Ra by calculating produced 15NO2- and 15NO3-, while 15NO2− was used as another tracer for Rn determination by calculating produced 15NO3-. The produced 15NO2- and 15NO3- were chemically reduced to 31NO with potassium iodide (KI) and zinc-cadmium reducing agent couple with KI, respectively. High throughput measurements of 31NO were achieved by a membrane inlet mass spectrometer (MIMS). Based on the optimized reaction conditions, an improved method with lower detection limit (0.1 μmol L-1), higher precision (relative error: 4.39% for 15NO2-, 0.65% for 15NO3-) and stable (relative standard deviation: 3.12% for 15NO2-, 8.97% for 15NO3-) was developed to quantify the concentrations of 15NO2- (0.1-200 μmol L-1) and 15NO3- (0.1-80 μmol L-1) with excellent calibration curves (R2≥0.994). In addition to water and sediment samples, this method can be widely applied to determine the Ra and Rn of dry soil. Overall, this SIT-APIR method provide a precise, fast, and promising approach for determining Ra and Rn in the environment with low cost.