Direct determination of total soil carbohydrate content

A direct procedure for the determination of total soil carbohydrate content and a classic determination after acid hydrolysis, both employing the phenol-sulphuric acid method, are compared. The direct procedure enables simultaneous determination of mono-, oligo- and polysaccharides without prior hydrolysis. This procedure is reproducible and takes only a short period of time. The correlation between the proposed method and the classic one with hydrolysis was high (r²=0.9843; n=11; p=0.05).