Development of a regional-scale library of near infrared reflectance soil spectra for alternative assessment of soil characteristics in Southern Belgium

In Walloon Region (Southern Belgium), five routine soil laboratories are grouped within a network promoting a better quality in analysis (www.requasud.be). The harmonization of protocols as well as methodological or technical prospective are realized under scientifically supervision of our research laboratory.
In this context, a study was conducted to evaluate the ability of the NIRS to predict some soil properties: CEC, TOC, TN and clay content. The initial models were elaborated upon local PLS regression on set of 1 300 soil samples. The local PLS calibration used allows an accurate prediction of the soil properties and precision of NIRS technique is comparable to reference analytical method