Alianza Mundial por el Suelo

Trainings Underway! The second webinar of the GLOSOLAN capacity building program was successfully held

In order to strengthen the analytical capacity of soil laboratories worldwide, GLOSOLAN is organizing a series of training sessions. The first series focuses on soil spectroscopy to help countries to understand soil conditions, improve agricultural productivity and reverse land degradation. Six webinars on soil spectroscopy, led by leading scientists, are being held throughout this second half of 2021 to provide participants with the basics of the most advanced aspects of this topic. To enable all interested parties to take advantage of this unique learning opportunity, the FAO Global Soil Partnership is making video recordings of all webinars available free of charge on the GLOSOLAN website. 

22/09/2021

On September 16, 2021, Prof. Budiman Minasny from the University of Sydney, Australia, gave the second webinar of the series and introduced how to use soil spectroscopy for accurate measurement of soil physical and chemical soil properties to the participants. Prof. Minasny started by reviewing the basic mechanisms for soil Visible–Near Infrared (vis–NIR) and Mid Infrared (MIR) spectroscopy. This was followed by detailed information on applications related to estimate different soil chemical, physical and biological properties using different chemometric modelling approaches. Examples of how to use a low cost vis-NIR spectrometer to develop a national soil spectral library for precision fertilization purposes in Indonesia were also provided. During the presentation, it was stressed how critical it is to use different indicators for spectral model validation purposes.  

Over 400 participants from 88 countries attended the webinar that also counted on the support of Prof. Alex McBratney, Dr. Alexandre Wadoux, Dr. Jose Padarian and Dr. Edward Jones as panelists.  Ultimately, soil spectroscopy shown to be a time- and cost-effective, environmental-friendly, nondestructive, reproducible, and repeatable analytical technique. Therefore, this technology can be an alternative to wet chemistry for soil monitoring.  

The next appointment is scheduled on the 26th of September 2021 with Prof. Alex McBratney. He will give a perspective of a future for soil spectral inference. Stay tuned as more topics will be covered in the next months, including Wet chemistry, Health and Safety, Equipment purchasing, Quality assurance and quality control, Laboratory management and others). 

Details of the event | Presentation | Recordings

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