@ Bence, you may use Fumigation & Extraction method given by Vance et al (1987) where chloroform fumigation of soil kills and lysis microbial cells with the release of cytoplasm into the soil environment; thus the cell material can be extracted from soil by 0.5 M K2SO4 for carbon.

Dear Prof. J. C. Tarafdar I tought that the Vance method is good for only microbial biomass carbon determination and not for soil respiration. Or do you mean that the CO2 that may be released from the mass decomposition process can be measured in this indirect way, giving a more comprehensive image?

@ Bence, yes but the method hardly include the root respiration. I suggest, you may include other methods like Open flow infra-red gas analyzer method (OF-method); the closed chamber method (CC-method); the dynamic closed chamber method (DC-method) beside alkali adsorption method and Vance method. For more details please look at the publication by Bekku et al (1997), Applied Soil Ecology 5(3): 247-254.

Hope this will be helpful!

J. C. Tarafdar , Avijit Ghosh thank you !

Bence Mátyás Seems your topic of study is really interesting, and hope you have already progressed on that. Apart from alkali absorption method, I can suggest you two other direct methods, if possible include them in your comparison, too:

1. direct in-situ measurement of soil respiration (pdf attached),

2. Gas chromatography measurement of CO2 evolved in a closed chamber (say, flask or capped bottles)

Looking forward to see your outcome !

Thanks

Debarati Bhaduri thank you for your kind response!