Real time soil sensing for determination of tropical soils pH

Abstract

One of the most limiting factors in crop productivity, not only in Brazil but in many parts of the world, is soil acidity. In search of automatic detection of changes in soil chemical elements and also speed and efficiency in the sampling and soil analysis soil, many different soil sensing techniques have been studied. This study evaluated the performance of an ion-selective sensor in determining the hydrogen ion concentration (pH) in two areas with physically and chemically distinct soils through comparative analysis of measured data from sensing while laboratory data was used as reference. Statistical analysis showed differences between manual and automatic methods of the sensor operation, manual operation being the one that showed better performance. In both of the operations, pH determination in soils with low clay content showed highest correlation with known true values.