Abstract:
Soil texture has an important role, both in the formation and long-term preservation of fertility, and in the evolution of degradation processes. The determination of soil texture is classically performed by the sedimentation method, with a pipette apparatus. This method is lengthy, space consuming, and laborious. Near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) as a rapid, reliable and cost-effective method for soil analyses is an alternative. The results obtained show a good potential of the NIRS for determi-nation of soil texture, with a good prediction for clay content (R2 = 0.73 and RMSE = 2.06), but a poor prediction for the content of silt (R2 = 0.52 and RMSE = 3.21) and sand (R2 = 0.51 and RMSE = 4.56).