Date of Award:

5-1954

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Department name when degree awarded

Chemistry

Committee Chair(s)

D. A. Greenwood

Committee

D. A. Greenwood

Committee

B. Crandall

Abstract

Application of fertilizers to soils to increase production yields has raised questions concerning the effect of fertilizer on chemical composition of plants. With the development of accurate, sensitive microbiological methods for the determination of amino acid in protein, speculations concerning amino acid content have been supplanted by acquisition of facts.

The effect of the different fertilizer applications on alfalfa yield has been discussed by Jones, et al (5). Also, some work has been done to determine the effect different fertilizers might have on the amino acid content of plant material. Some values (1,3,12) have been reported for the amino acid values for alfalfa hay. However, no environmental influence was mentioned. One of the first references made correlating soil treatment and amino acid content of alfalfa (14) indicated that levels of amino acids in alfalfa leaves were, in general, increased when the soil was treated with manganese, boron, or a mixture of these with cobalt, copper, calcium, and zinc. A later article (2) mentioned that increase in applications of boron, manganese, phosphorus, and potassium to the soil showed an increase in percent of essential amino acids in lespedeza hays. This did not necessarily mean that a larger share of the crop's total nitrogen was in the amino form. There may have been an increase in total nitrogen. Treatment with manganese and boron gave the greatest increase in amino acid content without appreciably changing the total nitrogen. No one amino acid increased out of proportion with the others. Boron was a limiting factor for the formation of tryptophane (15).

However, when methionine content of alfalfa hay was increased by addition of sulfur or flowers of sulfur to a culture solution, the increase occurred at the expense of the other amino acids (16).

Increased amounts of aspartic acid and arginine were found when alfalfa plants were grown in sulfur deficient sand culture, while sixteen other amino acids showed decreased amounts (9). One hundred selections of alfalfa with different genetic backgrounds varied in methionine content from 72-96 mg. of methionine per gram of nitrogen (17). This was a follow-up of an experiment conducted in 1950 where two strains of alfalfa showed considerable difference in their abilities to synthesize both methionine and cystine with a given amount of sulfur (20).

This study was undertaken to see if there is a variation in the content of amino acids in Ranger alfalfa hay with respect to use of different fertilizers. The study is limited to the 10 amino acids as determined essential by Rose (10,11) on experiments with rats and dogs; and supported by additional experiments on weanling pigs by Mertz, Beeson and Jackson (8).

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