Testing of the region of Murcia soils by near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and chemometrics.

A partial least squares near infrared (PLS-NIR) method has been developed for the determination of several physicochemical parameters in soils from different locations of the Region of Murcia. The method was based on the proper chemometric treatment of diffuse reflectance spectra of soil samples. Reflectance spectra were scanned from samples stored in glass vials in the NIR region between 800 and 2600 nm, averaging 36 scans per spectrum at a resolution of 8 cm(-1). Models were built using reference data of 39 samples selected from a dendrogram obtained after hierarchical cluster analysis of NIR spectra of soils and prediction parameters were established from a validation set of 109 addition…