The Brazilian fertilizer legislation requires that the presence of micronutrients be guaranteed by their total amount. This makes possible to use different products as source of micronutrients for fertilizers, but their agronomic efficiency is still doubtful. The purpose of this work was to characterize the micronutrient solubility and availability of thirty commercial fertilizers through five extractors: water, 2% citric acid, neutral ammonium citrate (1 + 9), 0.005 mol L-1 DTPA and 0.005 mol L-1 EDTA solutions. The results showed low solubility of Cu, Fe, Mn and Zn in "fritted" fertilizers. The 2% citric acid has shown to be a good extractor to identify Cu, Mn and Zn availability for plants. The B solubility was suitable in all fertilizers and its total amount showed to be a good indication of B availability. The Mo solubility presented high values for fertilizers with low amount of total Mo, but lower values for fertilizers with high amount of total Mo. The guarantee of total amount of micronutrients in fertilizers did not indicate their availability: it is necessary to establish an extractor in order to quantify micronutrient availability.
legislation; extractors