• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.259-265
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• 2004

A quicker method was developed for foliar analysis in diagnosis of nitrogen in apple trees based on multivariate calibration procedure using partial least squares regression (PLSR) and principal component regression (PCR) to establish the relationship between reflectance spectra in the near infrared region and nitrogen content of fresh- and dry-leaf. Several spectral pre-processing methods such as smoothing, mean normalization, multiplicative scatter correction (MSC) and derivatives were used to improve the robustness and performance of the calibration models. Norris first derivative with a seven point segment and a gap of six points on MSC gave the best result of partial least squares-1 PLS-1) model for dry-leaf samples with root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) equal to $0.699g\;kg^{-1}$, and that the Savitzky-Golay first derivate with a seven point convolution and a quadratic polynomial on MSC gave the best results of PLS-1 model for fresh-samples with RMSEP of $1.202g\;kg^{-1}$. The best PCR model was obtained with Savitzky-Golay first derivative using a seven point convolution and a quadratic polynomial on mean normalization for dry leaf samples with RMSEP of $0.553g\;kg^{-1}$, and obtained with the Savitzky-Golay first derivate using a seven point convolution and a quadratic polynomial for fresh samples with RMSEP of $1.047g\;kg^{-1}$. The results indicate that nitrogen can be determined by the near infrared reflectance (NIR) technology for fresh- and dry-leaf of apple.