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Trainings Underway! The third 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. 

28/09/2021

On September 26, 2021, Prof. Alex McBratney from the University of Sydney, Australia, gave the third webinar of the series to introduce participants to different type of spectroscopy for soil applications. Prof. McBratney started by presenting the definition and role of soil spectroscopy for soil analysis in both laboratory and field conditions. Thereafter, he introduced the concept of soil inference system and soil spectral inference system. This was followed by a live demo of these systems by Dr. Jose Padarian and Dr. Edward Jones. Prof. McBratney also gave a perspective on the development of soil spectroscopy on a global scale in the future. In this regard, he stated that soil spectroscopy can play a crucial role in building a formal global digital quantitative system of soil classification. This would help addressing one of the biggest challenges the soil community is facing nowadays. 

Over 306 participants from 70 countries attended this webinar that counted on the support of Prof.  Budiman Minasny and Dr. Alexandre Wadoux as panelists.) One of the main conclusions of this webinar was that  soil spectroscopy applications will mainly be for real-time agronomic and environmental decision-making including soil classification and diagnosis, and soil monitoring.  

The next appointment is scheduled on the 4th of October 2021 with Prof. José Alexandre M. Demattê. He will give an overview of the last 25 years' experience on building the Brazilian Soil Spectral Library, from scientific research purposes to the development of free estimation online service of soil analysis. 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, and Laboratory management , etc.). 

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