Abstract
Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been applied for the determination of nutrients in the green house soil samples. We determined appropriate spectral signatures of vital nutrients and calibrated the method to measure the nutrients in a naturally fertilized plot, cultivated with tomato and cucumber plants. From the calibration curves we predicted the concentrations of important nutrients such as Ca, K, P, Mg, Fe, S, Ni and Ba in the soil. Our measurements proved that the LIBS method rapidly and efficiently measures soil nutrients with excellent detection limits of 12, 9, 7, 9, 7, 10, 8 and 12 mg/kg for Ca, K, P, Mg, Fe, S, Ni and Ba respectively with a precision of ≈2%, The unique features of LIBS for rapid sample analysis demonstrated by this study suggests that this method offers promise for precision measurements of soil nutrients as compared to conventional methods in short span of time.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 131-139 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Environmental Monitoring and Assessment |
| Volume | 124 |
| Issue number | 1-3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2007 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements The support by the Physics Departments and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals is gratefully acknowledged. One of the author (T.H.) is thankful to National University of Science and Technology and Government of Pakistan for finacial support for his Ph.D work. He is also thankful to KFUPM for its hospitality and permission to work at its research facilties.
Keywords
- Analysis of soil sample
- Continuous emissions monitoring
- LIBS applications
- Laser-induced break down spectroscopy (LIBS)
- Nutrients and soil
- Tracemetals detection
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Environmental Science
- Pollution
- Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law