Developing a Standard for Validation of Innovative Methods in Agricultural Soil Testing

As global agriculture faces escalating challenges, the imperative for refined nutrient management becomes paramount. Establishing a standardized process to validate and legitimize emerging soil testing technologies offers a pathway for their acceptance by users and state regulatory bodies. The need for standardized methods for evaluating soil quality attributes is crucial in meeting the demands on global agriculture to support human and animal life while minimizing the environmental impacts of excess nutrient runoff. This makes the refinement of nutrient management protocols of critical importance. A key factor in such protocols is developing and adopting effective and accurate soil testing methods. As new soil testing technologies emerge, it becomes challenging for local and national agencies to determine whether to incorporate these technologies into their existing procedures for assessing soil quality, carbon monitoring and potential carbon and nutrient markets. Soil carbon represents a significant fraction of the global carbon cycle and is expected to be a considerable factor in future carbon management. There is a need to not only survey global soil carbon stocks but to monitor changes over time with an interest in increasing soil organic carbon (SOC). Small changes, on the order of < 1 %, need to be monitored to determine if changes in land management practices are effective. To monitor these changes economical and accurate methods are required to enable frequent and widespread analysis of soil samples. Established methods for testing and monitoring are expensive and time-consuming including Loss-on-ignition (LOI) and combustion. New innovations are emerging that are economically viable and scalable with the potential for field deployable systems. Despite the promise of these innovations, there is a need to establish a validation standard to assure accuracy and transparency. Standardization of validation methods will need to focus on accuracy and economic feasibility for assessing limits of detection and limits of quantification. The benefits of standardizing methods for validating new technologies are promoting accuracy and preventing fraud in emerging carbon and nutrient markets. The outcome of this work will foster the traceability to national metrology institutes for validation of these new technologies.