Visible and near-infrared spectroscopy in Poland: from the beginning to the Polish Soil Spectral Library

Abstract

Worldwide, there is a growing interest in the use of vi-sible and near-infrared spectroscopy (VIS-NIRS) to characterise soils. The method is largely used in the agricultural (foods and cereals) sector but is only in the research phase for soil analysis despite the fact that it is a suitable tool for precision agriculture. A quick search at the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection con-firmed that the method, although very popular in different fields of research, is still new within soils studies in Poland. Furthermo-re, the method only occasionally involved arable soils. This paper briefly describes how VIS-NIRS is used in Poland and demon-strates with a few examples the main advantages of the method over classical analytical method for mineral soil analysis. As an illustration of the method potential, soil organic carbon (SOC) and clay content were predicted using partial least-square (PLS) regression at field and national scale. The models were robust at field scale and revealed a high agreement between measured and predicted values with e.g. r2 = 0.65 and RMSEv = 0.11% for SOC. Prediction results at national scale are promising but less robust. VIS-NIRS is a suitable technique to estimate several soil proper-ties at different scales and at a relatively low cost.