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SOIL HEALTH ANALYSIS

Narendra Kumar Lenka, Jyoti Kumar Thakur, Sangeeta Lenka
  • Country of Origin:

  • Imprint:

    NIPA

  • eISBN:

    9789390512355

  • Binding:

    EBook

  • Number Of Pages:

    100

  • Language:

    English

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This book describes latest analytical procedures of key soil health indicators including physical, chemical and biological parameters. Most of the Soil Analysis manuals currently available, primarily deal with basic chemical and physical properties without giving emphasis on soil health assessment. However, literature shows indicator parameters such as soil carbon pools, soil aggregation behaviour, aggregate associated carbon content and biological activity are increasingly being used for monitoring the change in soil quality / soil health over a period of time. Analytical protocols in respect of these parameters are presently available in different research journals. This book compiles the procedures for the soil health indicator parameters including those being used of late for monitoring soil quality/soil health. This book is useful for researchers, post graduate students, academicians and policy makers in the fields of Soil Science, Agronomy, Natural Resource Management and Forestry.

0 Start Pages

Preface Soil health deterioration is currently one of the key threats to sustainable agriculture and food security. The term soil health, which is often used interchangeably with the term soil quality, basically focuses on the critical functions that soils perform. As defined by Doran and Parkin, (1994), soil quality is “the capacity of soil to function within ecosystem boundaries to sustain biological productivity, maintain environmental quality, and promote plant and animal health”. Soil health is a more comprehensive concept dealing with physical, chemical and biological properties of soil and its interrelations and takes a holistic view encompassing different functions of soil. Despite novelty of the concept, routine soil analysis procedures mostly are limited to soil chemical and plant nutrient availability parameters, possibly due to the ease of analysis and the belief of a directly proportional relationship between plant nutrients and crop production. However, response of crop production to plant nutrients also depend upon soil health and physical structure. A healthy soil with good physical structure, friability and better water retention and transmission characteristics has a higher response to application of nutrients. Thus, to assess the health or quality of soil, additional set of parameters in addition to the parameters related to nutrient availability, are considered. In general, soil health parameters include physical, chemical and biological properties of soil, which reflect the overall health of soil. Most of the Soil Analysis manuals currently available, primarily deal with basic chemical and physical parameters without giving an orientation to soil health assessment. However, certain indicator parameters such as soil carbon pools, soil aggregation behaviour, aggregate associated carbon content, biological activity etc indicate the health of a soil over a period of time. Soil microbes are vital for nutrient recycling and thus play a role in maintaining soil fertility. The recycling processes are brought about by several catabolic reactions mediated by enzymes secreted by microbes. Soil enzymatic activity gives an objective assessment of soil microbial health. Such indicator parameters though currently being used in research laboratories and by researchers, are not yet included in the framework of routine soil testing procedures. This manual describes procedures for analysis of different soil health based indicator parameters including physical, chemical and biological parameters. The parameters which can be a soil health indicator, are only included in the manual. Further, for an assessment of soil health, it may not be essential to include all parameters given in the manual. Depending upon availability of facilities, a minimum data set of selected parameters can be considered. For keeping it simple, the manual is primarily sectioned into physical, chemical, carbon fractions and biological activity. The physical parameters such as bulk density, aggregation, water holding capacity etc which can be a part of soil health assessment framework, are detailed. In addition to basic chemical properties, procedures for analysis of macro and micronutrients are given. A detailed procedural description of different soil enzymes such as dehydrogenase, acid or alkali phosphatase, have been described.

 
1 Collection and Preparation of Soil Sample

Soil sample collection is the first and most important step for soil quality analysis. A soil sample collected with due care and proper procedure is essential for getting reliable result of the analysis. The sample should represent the field and for practical purposes, an area of about 0.5 hectare is considered as one sampling unit. In case of conspicuous variation observed in the field in terms of texture, colour, slope etc, separate samples should be collected from areas differing in these attributes. In other words, sample should be collected from an area in the field with similar characteristics as seen through normal visual observation. Sampling should thus be avoided from areas like near trees, permanent vegetations, manure pits, manure piles or recently fertilized fields. Soil Sampling procedure For a particular field unit, one composite soil sample is prepared out of the samples collected from 7-8 spots distributed across the field unit. The entire field is covered by moving in a zig-zag manner from each sampling spot. For each sampling point or spot, scrapping off the surface litter such as grasses or crop residues is done. Then, a “V” shaped pit of 15-20 cm length and of equal width is made. Depth of sampling depends upon the requirement and on the type of crop. For field crops like paddy, wheat etc, samples are collected from 15 cm depth. From the “V” shaped pits, take outslice of ½ inch thickness from both sides of the exposed pit surfaces from top to bottom. The soil samples so collected from the 7-8 points are mixed thoroughly by hand and then is reduced to about 500 g by quartering process. The quartering process consists of a procedure in which the entire soil mass is divided into four quarters; the two opposite ones are discarded and the remaining two are remixed. This process is repeated till about 500g soil is obtained.

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2 Determination of Soil Reaction (pH)

Soil pH is the measure of hydronium ion (H3O+) or more commonly hydrogen ion (H+) activity in the soil suspension. Soil pH can be measured in soil-water suspension, saturation extract or in 0.01 M CaCl2 solution. Saturation extract is used to identify specific soil problems such as salinity or sodicity. Measurement of pH using 0.01 M CaCl2 solution gives more reproducible results than measured through soil-water suspension. It also provides a good approximation of field conditions as the electrolytic composition of 0.01 M CaCl2 is considered similar to that of soil solution. However, among the three methods, soil-water suspension is most commonly used in research laboratories as well as for fertilizer recommendation as it is simpler and more convenient.

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3 Determination of Soil Electrical Conductivity (EC)

Electrical conductivity (EC) is a useful indicator of soil salinity. Relationships have been developed between EC and salinity classes for a 1:1 soil: water suspension. With increase in salt content in a soil, the EC increases. Thus, for salt affected soils, measurement of EC is vital as accumulation of salts in the root zone is detrimental to plant growth. EC is a measure of the ability of a soil solution to conduct electrical current. Equipment and Reagents Digital Conductivity meter 0.01 M potassium chloride (KCl) solution: Dissolve 0.7456 g dry KCl in distilled water and make up the volume to 1.0 litre. This solution has an electrical conductivity of 1.413 dS m-1 at 25ºC.

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4 Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC)

Ion exchange is a reversible process by which a cation or anion held on the solid phase is exchanged with another cation or anion in the liquid phase. Soil mineral and organic colloidal particles have negative valence charges that hold dissociable cations. The power to retain cations at the surface of soil colloids is referred to as the cation exchange capacity (CEC). Cation exchange is a reversible reaction in soil solution, dependent upon negative charges of soil components arising from permanently charged or pH-dependent sites on organic matter and mineral colloid surfaces. The CEC is the sum of cations held by a kilogram of soil and is expressed in Cmol (p+)/kg soil. In most agricultural soils, the cation-exchange capacity (CEC) is generally higher than the anion exchange capacity (AEC).

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5 Exchangeable Sodium (Na+) (Ammonium acetate method)

Exchanges sodium (Na+) is animportantparameter forsalt affected soils. This is estimated by extraction with ammonium acetate and then measuring the extract inflamephotometer. Reagents Neutral normal ammonium acetate solution (1 N CH3COONH4 of pH 7): Dissolve 77.09 g of ammonium acetate in distilled water and make up the volume to one litre. Adjust the pH of the solution to 7 with ammonia solution or acetic acid. Standard solution of Na (500 mg/L Na): Dissolve 1.271 g of NaCl in distilled water and make up the volume to one litre. Working standard solution of Na (100 mg/L): Dilute 200 ml of 500 mg/L stock solution to 1000 ml.

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6 Soil Texture (Bouyoucos Hydrometer Method)

Soil texture refers to the relative distribution of sand, silt and clay on a sample of <2 mm size. It is an intrinsic soil property and basically refers to the particle size distribution in a soil. A number of physical characteristics and chemical properties of a soil are influenced by texture or particle size distribution. To estimate the content of sand, silt and clay particles, the soil samples are first brought into a dispersed state by mechanical and chemical treatments so that different binding agents are removed. In the dispersed soil samples, the soil particles settle down at a differential settling rate according to their size. In laboratory, the common methods for analysis for particle size distribution are : Buyoucos hydrometer method and International pipette method. In this chapter, the procedure of Buyoucos hydrometer method is described. Principle This method is based on the principle of variable rate of settling of particles as per their size and as described by Stokes’Law. Large particles shall settle fast. The measurement of density of the suspension is done at different times using a hydrometer (ASTM 152H-Type hydrometer is preferred). The measurement in this hydrometer is based on a standard temperature of 20 oC and a particle density of 2.65 Mg m-3 and the units are expressed in grams of soil per liter.The principal source of error in this procedure is the incomplete dispersion of soil clays as the clay particles are cemented by agents such as organic matter, CaCO and iron oxides. Incomplete dispersion results in low values for clay and high values for silt and sand. Thus, soils with higher organic matter (>1.0%) should be first treated with 6% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) for removal of organic carbon. The rate of sedimentation is also affected by temperature and the density of the dispersing solution.

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7 Soil Bulk Density (Core method)

Soil bulk density (BD) or apparent density is determined in -situ by core method. Stainless steel or metallic cores of cylindrical shape with known height and diameter are inserted into the soil till the rim of the core. The soil core is then excavated and the soil sample is oven dried to get the dry weight. The ratio of the oven dry weight to the total volume of the core gives the bulk density of the soil.

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8 Soil Aggregate Analysis (Cambardella and Elliott ,1993)

Aggregation is a direct indicator of soil structure. Ahealthy soil is considered to have well aggregated structure. Though not routinely followed during soil testing and chemical analysis, aggregation is one of the major indicators of soil physical health. Wet sieve method (Yoder, 1936) is usually followed for soil aggregate analysis. This involves gently raising and lowering a nest of sieves in water to assess the stability of aggregates to rapid wetting. However, the Yoder’s wet sieving method has been modified to make it simpler and currently, the method of Kemper and Rosenau, 1986 is being commonly used in research laboratories. One of the pre-requisites in these methods is the availability of wet sieving apparatus and further, these methods are laborious and time consuming. On the other hand, the method described by Cambardella and Elliott (1993) is considered very ideal because of its simplicity and is being widely used for aggregate bound soil carbon fraction study. The soil sample is wet sieved with a series of three sieves (2000, 250 and 53 micron size).

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9 Soil Aggregate Analysis (Dry sieving)

Aggregation is one of the basic physical characteristics of soil. Under natural conditions, primary soil particles, particularly clays, tend to join together to form secondary units called aggregates. Size distribution of soil aggregates is important because the size of the aggregates determines their susceptibility to water and wind erosion. Also, their size is important in determining the pore size distribution and regulating pore space in cultivated soils. There are a variety of procedures being in use to test the stability of aggregates and aggregate size distribution. However, choice of the method for analysis of aggregate size distribution is determined by the purpose of analysis. The developed measures are relative and purpose specific. This chapter discusses dry aggregate analysis.

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10 Wet Sieving Procedure for Aggregate Analysis (Using Yoder's apparatus)

Thisprocedure estimates aggregatestabilitytoimpact ofraindropsand water erosion. Wet sieving procedure was originally proposed by Yoder, 1936. Later, the procedure was modified byKemper and Rosenau, 1986. Equipment Yoder type sieve shaking electrically operated machine (3/4 inch stroke at 30 strokes per minute) Concentric sieves of various sizes of pores to fit properly into the machine. Weighing balance

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11 Mean Weight Diameter and Water Stable Aggregates

Wet sieving procedure separates soil into different size aggregates. However, for comparing the aggregate size distribution among management treatments and soil types, it is convenient to use indices. Mean weight diameter (MWD) and water stable aggregate percentage are some of the common indices used in aggregate stability studies. Mean Weight Diameter (MWD) This index was proposed by Van Bavel (1949) and is being used widely. The entire soil sample is passed through an 8 mm sieve prior to analysis and is subjected to wet sieving procedure as described before. The parameter which Van Bavel (1949) called the MWD is equal to the sum of the product of (a) the mean diameter (d ) of each size fraction and (b) the proportion of the total sample weight (w ) occurring in the corresponding size fraction. The summation is carried out over all ‘n’ size fraction including the one that passes through the finest sieve.

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12 Total Organic Carbon (TOC) (Dry combustion method)

In dry combustion technique, the combustion of soil sample (about 250 mg and mm sieved) is carried out at high temperature (about 1000 ºC) through feeding in an inert boat in the electric furnace. The CO2 produced from the oxidation of carbon present in the soil sample at high temperature is carried towards non dispersive infrared detector (NDIR) by a carrier gas where it is quantified and total carbon content is determined.

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13 Determination of Soil Organic Carbon (Walkley & Black, 1934)

This is one of the commonly used method to estimate organic carbon content in soil. In this wet digestion method, soil organic matter is oxidised with a mixture of K2Cr2O7 and concentrated H2SO4 utilizing the heat of dilution of H2SO4. The unused K2Cr2O7 is back titrated with ferrous sulphate or ferrous ammonium sulphate.

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14 Labile Carbon (KMnO4-Oxidizable soil organic carbon) (Weil et al., 2003)

Labile fractions of soil carbon (C) refer to the fraction of soil carbon that are easily altered by microbial activities. These fractions serve as sensitive indicators to changes in management induced soil quality and are grouped under active soil C pool. The method described by Weil et al. (2003)estimates changes in biologically active soil C using a dilute KMnO . This is an improvement over the method used by Blair et al (1995), where a very high concentration (0.333 M) of KMnO4 was used.

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15 Labile Carbon Fractions (K2Cr2O7 Method) (Chan et al., 2001)

Organic carbon present in soil can be very labile, labile or non-labile. This procedure measures the extent of lability of soil organic carbon through relative degree of oxidation by K2Cr2O7.

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16 Particulate Organic Matter - Carbon (POM-C) (Cambardella and Elliott, 1992)

Particulate soil organic matter (POM) is one of the important soil organic matter (SOM) pools and matches the characteristics of a slow, decomposable or stabilized SOM pool. The POM fraction is considered as one of the indicators to changes in management and thus has been used in soil quality assessment studies.

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17 Soil Respiration (Anderson, 1982)

Soil respiration is a good estimator of overall biological activity and thus is often used for describing soil quality. Soil respiration is estimated as the flux of CO2 emitted from the soil surface. It represents the sum of CO2 produced by root respiration and by heterotrophic decomposition. This procedure is a laboratory method where soil is incubated for a given period of days and the released CO is trapped by sodiumhydroxide (NaoH). This is also known as alkali trap method.

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18 Soil Available Nitrogen (N) (Subbiah and Asija, 1956)

This is a distillation method proposed by Subbiah and Asija (1956), where the soil is distilled with alkaline KMnO solution. The ammonia liberated is trapped in boric acid and then determined by titration against a standard acid. This procedure estimates the easily mineralizable nitrogen in soil.

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19 Soil Available Phosphorus (P) (Olsen et al. 1954)

Estimation of plant available phosphorus content in soil has been attempted using several extractants. However, Bray’s reagent and Olsen’s reagent are the two common extractants used in India. Bray’s reagent (0.03 N NH4F and N HCl) is used for acid soils, where, the fluoride ion complexes with Fe and Al in soil and thus releases the bound P. The Olsen’s reagent (0.5 M NaHCO3) is used for neutral-alkaline soils.

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20 Soil Available Potassium (K) (Hanway and Heidel, 1952)

In soil system, potassium (K) exists as water soluble, exchangeable, non- exchangeable and lattice K. The plant available K refers to the sum of water soluble and exchangeable K. Estimation of available K is usually done using neutral normal ammonium acetate as the extractant.

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21 Available Sulphur (S) in Soil by Turbidimetric Method (Williams and Steinbergs, 1959)

In this method, plant available sulphur (S) is extracted with 0.15% CaCl2 and the soluble sulphate is estimated on a colorimeter.

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22 Available Boron (B) in Soil by Hot Water Soluble Method (Berger and Truog, 1939)

The hot water soluble method is the most common method to estimate available B content in soil Reagents Azomethine-H: Dissolve 0.45 g azomethine-H and 1.0 g L-ascorbic acid in about 100 ml de-ionized or redistilled water. If solution is not clear, it should be heated gently on water bath at about 30ºC till it dissolves. A fresh solution should be prepared every week and kept in a refrigerator. Buffer solution: Dissolve 250 g ammonium acetate in 500 ml de-ionized or redistilled water. Adjust the pH to about 5.5 by slowly adding approximately 100 ml glacial acetic acid, with constant stirring. EDTA reagent (0.025 M): Dissolve 9.3 g EDTA in de-ionized or redistilled water and makes the volume up to 1 litre. Standard Boron solution: Dissolve 0.571 g boric acid (H3BO3) AR grade in a small volume of deionized water and make volume to 1000 ml to obtain a stock solution of 100 mg B/L.

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23 Soil Available Micronutrients (Fe, Mn, Zn and Cu) (Lindsay and Norvell, 1978)

This procedure uses Diethylene Tri-amine Penta Acetic acid (DTPA) as the chelating agent, which combines with free metal ions in soil solution and forms soluble complexes.

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24 Techniques for Analysis of Soil Biological Parameters

Analytical methods for study of soil microbes The analytical techniques for study of soil microbes are grouped under the following heads : Determination of form and arrangement of microorganisms in soil Isolation and characterization of soil microorganisms Detection of microbial activity in soil Determination of microbial biomass. For the above, the different analytical methods used are described below.

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25 Enumeration of Soil Microbes by Dilution Plating Technique

Enumeration of microbial flora present in soil is done by dilution plating technique. The technique is based on the fact of diluting the source inoculums to the extent that after plating the known volume of inoculums on appropriate media, the colonies will appear in countable range and each colony will be assumed to have been derived from a single cell/colony forming unit. Three numerically dominant groups of soil microbes are bacteria, actinobacteria and fungi. The most commonly used culture media for their enumeration include Nutrient Agar-for heterotrophic bacteria, Actinomycetes isolation Agar or Kenknight and Munaier’s agar for actinobacteria Martin’s Rose Bengal Agar for fungi.

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26 Dehydrogenase Activity

Biological activity or index of a soil is the function of number of organisms present in soil and their physiological efficiency. The rate of respiration can be used as an index of the biological activity of soil as it reflects the physiological efficiency of the organisms. Monitoring of dehydrogenase, which are respiratory enzymes and integral part of all soil organisms, will give a measure of biological activity of soil at a given time. During respiration biological oxidation of reduced compounds occur which is catalyzed by dehydrogenase. In the process TTC gets reduced to a pink coloured compound Triphenyl formazan (TPF) which can be quantitatively extracted by methanol and measured colorimeterically. The soil dehydrogenase activity in the current experiment was measured as per the methods of Cassida, (1977).

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27 Fluorescein Diacetate (FDA) Hydrolysis

Fluorescein diacetate (3’ 6’-diacetyl-fluorescein) is a fluorescein conjugated to two acetate radicals. This colourless compound is hydrolysed by both free (exoenzymes) and membrane bound enzymes, releasing a coloured end product, fluorescein. This end product absorbs strongly in the visible wavelength (490 nm) and can be measured by spectrophotometry. The enzymes responsible for FDA hydrolysis are plentiful in the soil environment. Non-specific esterases, proteases and lipases, have been shown to hydrolyse FDA. The hydrolysis of FDA by soil enzymes can be estimated by methods of Adam and Duncan (2001).

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28 β-Glucosidase assay (Eivazi and Tabatabai, 1988)

Principle β-Glucosidase (BG) plays a major role in the degradation of soil organic matter and plant residues. It catalyzes the hydrolysis of β-d-glucopyranosides, the final, rate-limiting step in the degradation of cellulose, the most abundant polysaccharide providing simple sugars for the soil microbial population. BG has been shown to be sensitive to changes in soil and residue management as well as an early indicator of changes in SOC before these changes are reflected in total or organic C analyses. The method is based on colorimetric determination of the p-nirtrophenol released by β-glucosidase when soil is incubated with buffered PNG solution and toluene.

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29 Phosphatase Activity in Soil

Acid and alkaline phosphatase enzymes are among the extensively studied phosphatases and classified so because of their optimum activities in acid and alkaline pH ranges, respectively. Acid phosphatase is predominant in acid soil while alkaline phosphatase is dominant in alkaline soils. The colorimetric assay of phosphatase is based on release of p-nitrophenol from hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl phosphate byaction of phosphatase enzyme in buffered soil solution (buffer pH 6.5 for acid and 11 for alkaline phosphatase assay).

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30 Electrophoresis of DNA Molecule

Principle Different ions migrate at different speed dictated by their size and by the amount of charges they carry. As a result, different ions can be separated from each other by electrophoresis. The magnitude of the electric force F exerted on the charged particle when subjected to electrophoresis is product of the charge q of the particle and the electric field E generated between the two electrodes.

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31 Important Terminologies used in Chemical Analysis

Mole A mole is defined as the amount of chemical substance containing exactly 6.022 140 76 × 1023 numbers of constitutive particles such as atoms, ions and molecules. This number is a fundamental constant named Avogadro’s number in honor of Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro. This constant is properly reported with an explicit unit of “per mole,” and rounded version being 6.022 × 1023/mol. This definition has been adopted since November, 2018 revising the old definition based on the number of atoms in a sample of pure 12C weighing exactly 12 g. Thus, as per the definition, 1 mole of any element contains the same number of atoms as 1 mole of any other element. However, the mass of 1 mole of a particular element is different from that of another element. Molar mass Molar mass of an element (or compound) is the mass in grams of 1 mole of that substance, a property expressed in units of grams per mole (g/mol).

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32 End Pages

Annexures

 
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