On the basis of Brinkman model, the onset of double-diffusive (thermosolutal) convection with a reaction term in a horizontal sparsely packed porous media is studied using the normal mode analysis. The effects of Brinkman term, the reaction term, the normalized porosity epsilon and Lewis number Le on the Rayleigh number for stationary and oscillatory case are presented graphically. The Darcy number destabilize the system in case of both stationary and oscillatory mode. The effects of Lewis number and reaction term depend oil the value of the values of solutal Rayleigh number. Furthermore, some results of Darcy model can be recovered in limit cases. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.