Measuring methods for soil microbial activity and biomass

Authors

• Helvi Heinonen-Tanski Department of Microbiology, University of Helsinki, SF-00710 Helsinki, Finland
• Aila Mettälä Department of Microbiology, University of Helsinki, SF-00710 Helsinki, Finland
• Riitta Silvo Department of Microbiology, University of Helsinki, SF-00710 Helsinki, Finland

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23986/afsci.72172

Abstract

The determining for the numbers of different soil microbial groups has some technical difficulties because of biological reasons. Therefore the measuring of cell components or metabolic activity of soil micro-organisms is often preferred. The different measuring methods for determining the numbers of micro-organisms or microbial cell components or microbial enzymatic activities will be shortly reviewed.