Rapid soil tests for assessing soil health
8 September 2025
Soil testing is relevant to several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 13 and 15) and can be a way to improve the sustainability of food production and land management. Conventional soil testing often only provides the basics such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. However, Eurofins Agro’s new Soil Health Indicator report encompasses the physical, chemical, and biological properties of soil, along with more detailed information including the carbon characteristics and the presence of contaminants.
“We developed and tested a rapid, standardised soil health assessment tool that combines near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and multi-nutrient 0.01 M CaCl2 extraction with Inductive Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy analysis. With these two methods, many soil characteristics and measurements are translated into the Soil Health Indicator report,” explains Eurofins’ Dr Arjan Reijneveld.
The new report presents values from soil test data including physical, chemical and biological parameters along with an ABCDE score. The aim of this is to offer growers more than just typical N, P and K measurements and instead to look more deeply into essential nutrients, the water holding capacity of the soil, its structure and the presence of potential contaminants such as heavy metals.
“With greater interest in soil health from businesses, governments and food producers, it is essential that more information is available quickly, and that the way that information is reported is easy to understand,” says Dr Reijneveld.
He suggests that governments, fertiliser manufacturers, the dairy industry and agrifood companies all have a vested interest in working to improve the traceability of products to inform stake holders and consumers about the positive measures being taken to improve the sustainability of the food chain.
“Since 2015 193 counties agreed on the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, and soil health is integral to achieving many of these UN-SDGs, including zero hunger (SDG2), good health wellbeing (SDG3), clean water and sanitation (SDG6), sustainable consumption and production (SDG12), climate action (SDG13) and life on land (SDG15). The increased attention on soil health raises the need for uniform definitions, and clear ambitions and goals,” he says.
Despite these ambitions and goals, there is still a relative lack of commonality between the frequency and methodology of soil testing. Globally there is no standard, and often only common soil components such as P, K and pH are tested for. In his most recent published study (Rapid Soil Tests for Assessing Soil Health), Dr Reijneveld looked to develop an integrated procedure for soil health assessment.
“We selected more than 50 soil properties pertinent to soil health. These properties were assessed through an innovative three-step analytical approach, which was tested across 15 countries. We analysed more than 100,000 samples from cropland, grassland, urban and natural areas, following standard sampling protocols, and presented results for >50 soil health indicators, with reference and target values, as well as for a soil health score, which follows the recently proposed EU soil monitoring law,” he explains.
The challenge of analysing soil samples was overcome using a combination of Near-Infrared spectroscopy, and a calcium chloride extraction followed by Inductive Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy or Discrete Analysis.
“For the end user of these results it was essential that we found a way to translate the data into easy-to-understand values. That is why we have designed Soil Health Indicator. It takes all the data from the tests and presents them in a full soil health report which includes a soil health score, soil and crop management guidelines and thresholds,” he says.
The Soil Health Indicator report has seven sections including physical, biological, soil carbon, essential nutrients, contaminants, recommendations and an ABCDE score.
“Values for soil carbon and the soil’s ability to store carbon, the physical characteristics including soil compositions, structure and density, and the biodiversity of a sample are presented alongside the essential nutrients and potential contaminants. This provides the data needed to offer crop-based guidelines based on individual crops such as potatoes, wheat or silage maize, and helps to offer a soil-based guideline for growers to make more informed decisions” he says
The ABCDE score is a new benchmarking method that reflects the soil health assessment proposed by the European Commission. It uses multiple parameters to apply an A-E score to the different soil characteristics which can be used as an easy and quick way to establish improvements in soil health.
“We aimed to create a soil health test framework that is cost-effective, has a low environmental impact, is fast, and can routinely analyse a wide variety of soil characteristics relevant to soil health and the SDGs. We also wanted to make the soil health assessments easy to implement for land users to optimise their land management, and for the agrifood industry to verify and comply with their sustainability claims. Our aim is to promote a ‘bottom-up’ approachwhere soil testing can be used by farmers and growers, municipalities, and all land managers as a tool to improve the profitability and sustainability of the land” says Dr Reijneveld.
The Soil Health Indicator report therefore offers the opportunity for land managers to demonstrate sustainability in a transparent and goal-oriented way.
“We see Soil Health Indicator as a way for land managers to identify key soil health indicators and use these to develop goals rather than working to prescribed top-down management measures’ an outcome-based approach This approach has the potential to create opportunities for innovation and inspire entrepreneurship among land users,” he concludes.
Scientific foundation: Rapid Soil Tests for Assessing Soil Health
For more information: Soil Health Indicator - Eurofins Agro
Rapid soil tests are beneficial for alle stakeholders in the agri-food chain.
