A Quantitative and Qualitative Molecular Analysis of High Organic Content Liquids Used in Agriculture.

Currently there are many different types of high organic content liquids (HOCL) available in the market for agricultural use. These products often include components like seaweed extracts, compost tea and/or humic substances as well as other additives which result in a complex mixture that is difficult to characterize. The typical label analysis for these types of products include Humic Acid, Total Carbon or Organic Matter, which are bulk material properties that don’t necessarily correlate with agricultural benefits. In this work, a two-step molecular analysis of high organic content liquids is presented. A quantitative step measures the Total Carboxylic Acid and Phenol (CAPS) content of the material and the qualitative step provides a molecular fingerprint using FTICR-MS. Results show that HOCLs with similar bulk material analysis and properties can differ significantly when analyzed for CAPS and with FTICR-MS. We think this method may be an improvement on existing methods to quantify liquid agricultural supplements