Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Soil Sci.

Sec. Soil Pollution & Remediation

Volume 5 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoil.2025.1661473

This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Approaches to Soil Science for Remediation and Sustainable DevelopmentView all articles

Soil salinity hazard monitoring with portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometry and electrical conductivity meters

Provisionally accepted
  • Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Ben Guerir, Morocco

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Soil salinity is a major form of land degradation that diminishes soil fertility and health, thereby severely impacting the economic development and livelihood improvement of agrarian countries worldwide. Salt-affected soils generally include both saline soils, characterized by excess soluble salts that hinder plant growth, and sodic soils, where high exchangeable sodium levels disrupt soil structure and permeability. Frequent and accurate monitoring of farmland salinity is a vital action for the timely management and control of salinization. Thus, this study was carried out in irrigated fields of the Tassaout region of Morocco, where irrigation has been practiced for centuries, with the objective of evaluating the effectiveness of using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) for direct soil salinity measurement by comparing the results with EC measured values in soil to water (S:W) extracts at various ratios, namely 1:1, 1:2.5, and 1:5. In addition, pertinent soil physico-chemical properties, including pH and organic matter content, were determined for correlation analysis. The study proved that pXRF can be a reliable, cost-effective, and quick option for the electrical conductivity of saturated extract (ECe) measurement both in the laboratory and in situ. Furthermore, the study developed predictive models for soil ECe estimation by complementing the pXRF technique, EC meter, and machine learning algorithms. The models were trained on 75% of the dataset using k-fold cross-validation and the remaining 25% for validation. The models performances were significantly better for EC1:1 (R2 = 0.94), EC1:2.5 (R2 = 0.93), and EC1:5 (R2 = 0.97). In conclusion, pXRF can be a reliable, cost-effective, and quick option for direct EC measurement both in the laboratory and in situ. In addition, the predictive models developed are promising tools for accurately inferring EC soil-to-water extract (ECS:W) values either and ECe from pXRF or EC-meter readings. The study recommends using the pXRF technique and the predictive models developed for large-scale salinity monitoring.

Keywords: Soil salinity, Dilution factor, correlation analyses, Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), Electrical conductivity (EC), Rapid measurement, irrigated soils, soil properties

Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 21 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 ELMOATASSEM, Kebede and LAZAAR. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: TARIK ELMOATASSEM, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Ben Guerir, Morocco

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.