Contemporary approaches to studying the structure of soil organic matter

The aim of the work was to briefly outline the main approaches to studying the structure of soil organic matter, allowing to obtain the most complete description of this unique natural phenomenon. The main attention is paid to the approaches implemented in the Dokuchaev Soil Science Institute, examples of which are published in this special issue. Present methods can be divided into two large groups: research and routine. Research methods are methods and approaches that have been recently introduced or are being introduced into scientific practice. Routine ones are widely used to study soil organic matter. The advantage of the former is the prospect of obtaining new unique data, while the latter provide the ability to obtain well-reproducible, comparable results that are promising for multivariate analysis. The research methods considered in the work include ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry with Fourier transform and nuclear magnetic resonance methods on 13C and 1H nuclei with Fourier transform. The most promising methods for analyzing the structure of soil organic matter are described as routine methods: optical methods (spectroscopy in the ultraviolet and visible range and fluorescence spectroscopy), infrared spectroscopy and pyrolysis with gas chromatography and mass detection.