To evaluate the effects of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) on phosphate retention (including bothsorption and/or precipitation reactions) on soils, experiments were performed by using two typicalcalcareous soils from southeastern Spain (Calcic Regosol and Luvic Xerosol) and two different typesof DOC: (1) extracts from a commercial peat (DOC-PE) and (2) high-purity tannic acid (DOC-TA).The experiments were carried out from a 0.01 M CaCl
2 aqueous medium at 25
C. The results obtainedshow that the presence of both DOC-PE and DOC-TA, over a concentration range of 15 (DOC-15)to 100 (DOC-100) mg L
-1, produces in all cases a decreasing amount of phosphate retained in thesoils studied, the decrease observed being higher when DOC-PE is used as source of DOC. Thevalues of the decrease observed when DOC-PE was added ranged between 19.9% (DOC-15) and15.6% (DOC-100) for the Calcic Regosol and between 17.3% (DOC-70, DOC-100) and 14.6%(DOC-15) for the Luvic Xerosol. The variation observed when DOC-TA was added ranged between8.5% (DOC-100) and 0.5% (DOC-35) for the Calcic Regosol and between 7.0% (DOC-100) and1.0% (DOC-15) for the Luvic Xerosol.Keywords: Phosphate; sorption; precipitation; calcareous soil; dissolved organic carbon