Tissue Analyses: Guidelines and NIRS Revisited

Every few years, we have to remind everyone about the accuracy of shortcut analytical techniques such as Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) for turfgrass tissue analysis. The use of NIRS for analysis of plant tissues has the advantage of providing answers rapidly, and of providing accurate estimates of tissue nitrogen content. However, NIRS is not sufficiently accurate to provide accurate estimates of ten other key tissue nutrients. For this reason, standard wet chemistry methods are more reliable indicators of serious…