Monosilicic acid is the available form in which plant can take silicon and this is not a stable form. That's why I want to know how to prepare that and how to estimate that.
Kindly give your inputs.
Hydrolysis of silicon tetrachloride in presence of silver oxide yields monosilicic acid. Its a very old method.
It can also be prepared at low pH (3) from a cation exchange resin slurry at freezing point of water.
Article The Preparation of Monosilicic Acid
Estimation of monosilicic acid involves spectrophotometric methods, gravimetric methods (colorimetric) as well as ion chromatography. I have always used oxalic acid, acidic molybdenum reagent based estimation of silicates using ascorbic acid. Titrimetric methods of determination of soluble silica is also available from molybdosilicic compounds.
Although monosilicic acid seems to be the only bioavailable form of silicon, terrestrial plants almost always end up secreting it or sequestering it as phytoliths. Hence I don't think it will make much of a difference. I have been working with diatoms for a long time and silica cycle is one of the primary biogeochemical interest of mine. Stability of silicic acid depends on the low pH which is very difficult to maintain within a living organism and requires anoxic matrix with anaerobes.
You can opt for any suitable method amongst the ones mentioned above.
Wish I could say that application of simplest silicon forms would render the silicon bio-usable in spite of being bioavailable Dr. More.
Not only this but in order to maintain the bioavailable form of orthosilicic acid you need to establish its equilibrium with disilicic acid as well as their various polymers, which is easier said than done in vitro or in vivo.
With sincerest regards,
Dr. Mukherjee
Beckwith, R. S., and R. Reeve. "Studies on soluble silica in soils. II. The release of monosilicic acid from soils." Soil Research 2, no. 1 (1964): 33-45.
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