Methods of Diagnosing Toxicity¹

The rôle of aluminium in soil infertility and toxicity

“…terms of the new hypothesis. It is unnecessary here to illustrate this phase of the subject by descriptions of individual examples, since many pertinent summaries have been presented in recent years (18,26,38,40,53). It should be noted, however, that much of the early work on the role of aluminium in soil infertility was performed either with abnormal, highly acidic soils (3), or with normal soils that had received large and numerous field dressings of fertiliser salts, generally ammonium sulphate (7,12,14,27,33).…”

“…Certain investigators (for example, Gile(40) andMagistad (43)) have adversely criticised much of the earlier work, such as that ofHartwell and Pember(14), on the grounds that insufficient regard was paid to phosphate nutrition of plants grown in culture solutions whose reaction values favoured phosphate precipitation.…”