Soil Electrical Conductivity (Ec) Mapping Using Real-Time Soil Sensor

Abstract

The development of soil electrical conductivity (EC) recently to generate soil EC spatial variability map is increasingly attractive because of its application for site-specific crop management. Several commercial applications have been developed and marketed. The purpose of this paper is to compare soil EC spatial variability map produced by capacitance and spectroscopic sensors.

The two sensors (capacitance and spectroscopic sensors) was mounted in a Real-time soil sensor. The spectrophotometer was used that has linearly arrayed photodiodes of 256 channels for 400 to 900 nm for visible (Vis) lights and 128 channels for 900 to 1700 nm for near infrared (NIR) lights. For two capacitance sensors were embedded in soil penetrator (front/ECF and side/ ECS), which its tip with a flat plane edge to make uniform soil cuts and the soil flattener behind produced a uniform surface texture.

It was found that spectroscopic method performed better compared to capacitance sensor. Using linear regression, the spectroscopic method has shown a correlation of 0.75 with soil EC generated from laboratory analysis (ECL). While, the capacitance method shows significant different compared to soil ECL. The primary cause of the extreme differences between ECL, ECF and ECS values is likely related to the calibration of the capacitance sensor itself.