LIBS in agriculture: A review focusing on revealing nutritional and toxic elements in soil, water, and crops

In recent years, rapid urbanization and industrialization have caused severe damage to the agro-ecological environment, such as heavy metal pollution of soil, eutrophication, and pollution of water, and excessive harmful substances in crops. Traditional atomic spectroscopy detection techniques, like atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), atomic fluorescence spectroscopy (AFS), atomic mass spectrometry (AMS), and X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRFS), enable high-quality detection of agricultural pollution, but they are time-consuming and labor-intensive. Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technology is widely applied in agro-ecological monitoring because of its strengths in situ and non-destructive, no (little) sample pre-processing, fast and accurate. This review summarizes the applications of LIBS in agriculture in the last five years from 2017 to 2021. The detailed contents of the review are as follow: (a) analysis of soil and fertilizers elemental composition, (b) water quality detection, and (c) pests, diseases, and elements in crops. Lastly, the challenges and developing prospects of LIBS in agriculture are presented.