Tissue Analyses: Guidelines and NIRS Revisited

Tissue,

Bottom line: The use of Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (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 imbalances in turfgrass nutrition han is the NIRS method. It is also important to remember that tissue analyses by any method should always be used in conjunction with – but not instead of soil analyses.

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by Larry J. Stowell, Ph.D. and Wendy Gelernter, Ph.D.