Potential Use of Near Infrared Reflectance Monitoring in Precision Agriculture

Abstract

The concept of Precision farming is not new, and interest in the potential benefits gained momentum in the late eighties. The high cost of soil sampling and chemical and physical analysis by conventional laboratories has restricted the full implementation of this technique at the field level. Near infrared reflectance (NIR) could be a cost‐effective solution. Soil properties that have been calibrated include gravimetric soil water, clay content, buffer capacity, pH, electrical conductivity, titratable acidity, organic matter, mineralizable nitrogen, potential ammonia volatilization from urea, potential nitrification rate, and urease activity. A whole paradigm shift in philosophy is needed in soil testing to move away from the traditional approach of taking a perceived‐representative sample, in which all the spatial variation is lost, to using a combination of grid soil sampling at a sample intensity of 4 to 10 cores per ha and analysed separately using rapid but less accurate methods such as NIR.

Keywords:

• Precision farming
• near infrared reflectance
• soil sampling
• chemical analysis
• soil properties
• spatial variation
• grid sampling
• sampling intensity