Amino Acid: Its Dual Role as Nutrient and Scavenger of Free Radicals in Soil

Rahul Datta, Divyashri Baraniya, Yong-Feng Wang, Aditi Kelkar, Ram Swaroop Meena, Gulab Singh Yadav, Maria Teresa Ceccherini and Pavel Formanek
Additional contact information
Rahul Datta: Department of Geology and Pedology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University, Brno 61300, Czech Republic
Divyashri Baraniya: Department of Agri-food Production and Environmental Sciences, University of Florence, Firenze 50121, Italy
Yong-Feng Wang: Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Silviculture, Protection and Utilization, Guangdong Academy of Forestry, Guangzhou 510520, China
Aditi Kelkar: College of Professional Studies Northeastern, University, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Ram Swaroop Meena: Department of Agronomy, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh 221005, India
Gulab Singh Yadav: ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region, Tripura Centre, Lembucherra, Tripura 799210, India
Maria Teresa Ceccherini: Department of Agri-food Production and Environmental Sciences, University of Florence, Firenze 50121, Italy
Pavel Formanek: Department of Geology and Pedology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University, Brno 61300, Czech Republic

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-9

Abstract: Ascorbic acid is a bacteriostatic agent; one of the many ways by which ascorbic acid hampers bacterial growth is by the production of hydrogen peroxide, which further converts into hydroxyl free radicals. Certain amino acids can counteract the inhibitory effect of hydroxyl free radicals by checking their oxidizing effect. Though ascorbic acid is bacteriostatic in nature, it facilitates prokaryotic respiration by decarboxylation. This study was carried out to understand how microbes from different horizons of the forest soil respond to the addition of a bacteriostatic agent (ascorbic acid) and growth promoting agent (amino acids), with respect to the soil respiration. We observed that the addition of either ascorbic acid or a combination of it with amino acid consistently results in increased soil respiration, and this increase is different for different soil types depending on soil composition and origin. Furthermore, we also found that beta alanine-induced maximum respiration in basic soils and L-glutamic in acidic soils. This study is significant because it can be used to explain how a strong reducing sugar, i.e., ascorbic acid, affects the soil respiration mediated via soil microbes. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first report that demonstrates the effect of bacteriostatic and the growth promoting agent together on microbe-mediated soil respiration.

Keywords: bacteriostatic; ascorbic acid; free radical; decarboxylation; bete alanine; microbe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/8/1402/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/8/1402/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:8:p:1402-:d:107643

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().