Importance of nitrogen in the nutrition of all living on earth, made the scientists to study the extent of the atmospheric nitrogen fixation by unsymbiotic microflora in soil. The methods of quantitative estimation, used in the 20th century, have not been entirely satisfactory, because they overlooked the nitrification processes, testing fixed nitrogen by the Kjeldahl method only. This paper
... [Show full abstract] suggests a more complete method for determining the natural contribution of atmospheric nitrogen fixation to the soil. This method takes into account both the N- organic and N-NH+4 as quantified by the K eldahl method and the nitric N produced by mineralization of the N compounds resulting from dinitrogen fixation during the soil incubation period.