Soil organic matter evaluation in soil analysis laboratories is done using wet combustion methods. But, these methods contaminate the laboratories waste with chromium, so it is impacted find alternative methods to measure soil organic matter. The work was carried out in Embrapa Grape and Wine soil analysis laboratory to evaluate the loss-on-ignition as an alternative to wet combustion method to measure organic matter content in a group of soils from Rio Grande do Sul, in Southern Brazil. Nineteen soils not cultivated with clay content varying from 210 and 530g kg-1, were collected in layer 0-20cm. The soils were dried, 2mm sieved, grounded and prepared organic carbon analysis with loss-on-ignition, Walkley-Black and sulfochromic solution methods. The results showed that the loss-on-ignition method and Walkey-Black, in general, determined smaller percentage of organic matter than the sulfochromic solution method. Thus, the adoption at loss-on-ignition method, that doesn’t use the pollutant chromium, needs calibration to correct the differences, since the Walkey-Black method and sulfochromic solution are asked as reference methods and estimate with great precision the percentage of soil organic matter.
method; wet digestion; organic carbon; soil organic matter
