Abstract
Soil organic matter was extracted from field soils using mild pretreatment and a Chelex 100 resin bed. The extracts were separated by molecular weight using a Sephadex G-25 gel permeation chromatography column. Reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography and o-phthalialdehyde precolumn derivatization were used to rapidly determine the primary amino compounds present in the 6 N HCl-soluble fractions. Twenty amino-N compounds were quantitatively identified in the hydrolysates.