Have dried grass plant material and i was wanting to get the information for a lab that could perform total, organic, and inorganic chemcical analysis. Any suggestions?
You can do the first two analyses yourself quite easily in the laboratory (or at home lol). Total biomass is measured by drying the grass until there is no further weight loss and weighing (obtain separate above and below ground values in addition to total). Organic content is obtained by furnace incineration and subtracting the ash weight from the original dry weight. I did these for my wetland studies listed below (I did soil and plant organic/ash content). Nutrient (inorganic chemical) content can be done by most laboratories using leaf tissue tests :)
Dear Lashunda,
You might need to initially find out what measurements/analytics you would need for design of your experiments. There are too many methods and pretty costly as well.
- It seems the Lawrence, Berkeley may be a good choice and they are, of course, well-equipped: http://www.lbl.gov/
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/berkeley-lab-awarded-46m-transformational-agriculture-technologies
- While Ajayan's lab is focused in nanotech, yet they are highly expert and well-equipped in carbon. You may contact Dr. Robert Vajtai who is in charge of operations: http://ajayan.rice.edu/group-members/
Best,
J.
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