Soil texture is a key soil property influencing many agronomic practices including fertilization and liming. Therefore, an accurate estimation of soil texture is essential for adopting sustainable soil management practices. In this study, we used different machine learning algorithms trained on vis–NIR spectra from existing soil spectral libraries (ICRAF and LUCAS) to predict soil textural fractions (sand–silt–clay %). In addition, we predicted the soil textural groups (G1: Fine, G2: Medium, and G3: Coarse) using routine chemical characteristics as auxiliary. With the ICRAF dataset, multilayer perceptron resulted in good predictions for sand and clay (R2 = 0.78 and 0.85, respectively) and categorical boosting outperformed the other algorithms (random forest, extreme gradient boosting, linear regression) for silt prediction (R2 = 0.81). For the LUCAS dataset, categorical boosting consistently showed a high performance for sand, silt, and clay predictions (R2 = 0.79, 0.76, and 0.85, respectively). Furthermore, the soil texture groups (G1, G2, and G3) were classified using the light gradient boosted machine algorithm with a high accuracy (83% and 84% for ICRAF and LUCAS, respectively). These results, using spectral data, are very promising for rapid diagnosis of soil texture and group in order to adjust agricultural practices.
Sorghum crop is grown under tropical and temperate latitudes for several purposes including production of health promoting food from the kernel and forage and biofuels from aboveground biomass. One of the concerns of policy-makers and sorghum growers is to cost-effectively...
Visible and near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (VIS-NIR) has shown levels of accuracy comparable to conventional laboratory methods for estimating soil properties. Soil chemical and physical properties have been predicted by reflectance spectroscopy successfully on subtropical and temperate soils, whereas soils...
Sustainable intensification (SI) is promoted as a rural development paradigm for sub-Saharan Africa. Achieving SI requires smallholder farmers to have access toinformation that is context-specific, increases their decision-making capacities, andadapts to changing environments. Current extension services often struggle toaddress these...
Regional agroecological systems are examples of complex adaptive systems, where sustainability is promoted by social networks that facilitate information sharing, cooperation, and connectivity among specialized components of the system. Much of the existing literature on social capital fails to recognize...
To link agriculture and nutrition with a participatory research approach, was developed a two-stage research programme. In the first stage, was developed an agricultural innovation consisting of three yellow potato cultivars with better nutritional contents, higher yield and better resistance...