Microturbulence and the effect of departures from LTE on photospheric iron lines

It is shown that depth-dependent departures from LTE such as obtained by Athay and Lites (1972) will not notably affect the solar curve-of-growth of Fe i. This implies that both abundance and microturbulence may be determined from this curve-of-growth assuming LTE, and excludes that microturbulence is an artefact produced by non-LTE effects.