The growing interest in the production of organic foods has intensified the demand for fertilizers with suitable characteristics to supply this production system. However, the quality of commercial organic fertilizers is, in some cases, doubtful due to the lack of analytical methodology to evaluate the products. Our study proposes a methodology based on the evaluation of the humification degree obtained by quantification of organic free radicals (OFR), which are naturally present in organic matter and can be detected by electronic paramagnetic resonance (EPR). Nine samples of organic fertilizers of different origins were analyzed and two soils and vegetal coal were used as possible sources of adulteration. The results showed substantial variations in the OFR concentration in the samples (from 0.10 × 10(18) to 1.84 × 10(18) spins g-1). The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) confirmed the statistically significant difference among samples for this parameter. This indicates that OFR concentration can be used to differentiate organic fertilizers. Analyzing spectral alterations in the EPR signals such as spin concentration, line width, g value, line shape and detection of new signals, it was also possible to detect adulterations in the samples caused by soil and vegetal coal additions. The detection limits of the adulterations were around 5 % and 10 %, depending on the type of impurity and EPR parameter under study.
organic fertilizers; organic agriculture; organic free radicals; humification; EPR
