| dc.description.abstract | Soil mineralogy is a principal determinant
of many soil functional properties that are
expensive and time consuming to measure,
and can in turn determine soil agricultural,
engineering and environmental
qualities. Africa soil mineralogy has however
not been adequately and appropriately
researched upon. This is because of poorly
and fragmentally coordinated scientific
investigations coupled with the limitations
in the traditional analytical techniques. Recent
developments in instrument designs
and capabilities, and launch of bench-top
X-ray Diffractometers (XRD) have widened
the possible application areas for
high- throughput X-ray diffraction (XRD)
as a powerful complementary tool for soil
screening. This study was conducted to develop
a high precision and rapid through
put protocol for X-ray diffraction analysis
and demonstrate its ability to make reliable
and accurate measurement of Africa soil
mineralogy, using a Bruker D2 PHASER
benchtop diffractometer. A multiphase soil
sample was investigated for independent
evaluation of the analysis accuracy, presenting
the sample preparation and mounting
techniques used. A further 160 diverse
set of top soils samples selected from the
sentinel sites of the African Soils Information
Services (AfSIS) project was used to
develop a generalizable approach, and to
test the applicability of the protocol developed.
With only half-hour scanning time,
the method developed produced high quality
diffractograms that could reliably be
matched to possible known patterns from
the powder diffraction files, taking XRD
from what has been largely time consuming
and specialized measurement, to a rapid
and simple method that can be used for
routine analysis of soil mineralogy by soil
testing laboratories. | en_US |
