Scanning for Soil Health: Assessing the Accuracy and Scalability of Innovations for In-Situ Soil Measurement

Karan S. Shakya, Leah E. M. Bevis and Sydney Gourlay

No 11496, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Cost-effective and scalable soil testing tools can play an instrumental role in guiding agricultural decisions and policies, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where declining soil fertility poses a serious threat to productivity. Laboratory tests of soil samples, which provide the most accurate measures of soil properties, remain costly and challenging to scale in the context of national surveys or programs. To test and validate alternative approaches to soil measurement, the World Bank launched the Uganda Climate, Land Area, and Soil Study project. This paper evaluates the accuracy and scalability of three soil testing tools (the AgroCares Scanner, the Palintest kit, and the Sonkir pH meter) as well as two publicly available soil maps (Innovative Solutions for Decision Agriculture and SoilGrids), against laboratory-based soil measurements conducted by the Center for International Forestry Research and the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry. While differences in soil parameter estimates may be expected to vary across testing methods, understanding the nature and magnitude of the divergence in estimates from those measured using established laboratory approaches is critical for practitioners and analysts seeking to leverage soil analyses to inform policy and program design. The paper finds that the soil tools – except the Sonkir pH meter, which performs poorly – provide only moderately adequate predictions of soil properties, and both soil maps fail to capture sample variation. These findings highlight key trade-offs in accuracy, cost, and scalability and offer practical guidance for scaling soil monitoring strategies in Uganda and similar contexts.

Date: 2026-11-02
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