Summary
Phosphate‐fixing soils and hydrated iron and aluminium oxides have their power of sorbing phosphate reduced if they are pretreated with reagents forming insoluble or unionized compounds with iron and aluminium ions. Soils sorb many more milliequivalents of these blocking reagents than correspond to the drop in their phosphate‐sorbing power, and it does not seem to be possible for a soil to sorb so much of one of these reagents that it ceases to sorb phosphate. Blocking reagents such as potassium ferrocyanide and 8‐hydroxy‐quinoline cannot be used to distinguish hydrated iron from aluminium oxides as the agents causing this phosphate sorption.
Soils which have been treated with hydrosulphite to remove some of the free hydrated iron and aluminium oxides still sorb phosphate, but this sorption is reduced to a very low value if the soil is then treated with a blocking reagent. The fulvic acid fraction of soil organic matter is a good blocking agent. Fulvic acid and blocking reagents such as aluminon and alizarin S cause the soils to deflocculate in 0.1 N sodium acetate.