Organized by the Forage & Grassland Management Program, Crop and Soil Sciences Department, NC State University; Camcore, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, NC State University; and Büchi.

Registration and Deadline

The registration cost includes breakfast, lunch, coffee breaks, and workshop materials.

Prerequisites: You will need to bring your laptop each day and have familiarity with R programming.

Save money when you register by October 9, 2026. Early registration is $450.

The regular registration deadline is October 10, 2026.  Registration cost is $500.

WORKSHOP REGISTRATION LINK

 

Location

• Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday (November 9 to 11): Plant Sciences Building, Conference Rooms A, B, C (directions)

Overnight Lodging

Raleigh offers a wide variety of hotels and accommodations to suit different preferences and budgets. We have secured a discounted room block at the State View Hotel, located on NC State’s Centennial Campus, where the workshop will take place. Van transportation will be available to and from the hotel. Reserve your room using the CEFS group rate discount.

Parking on Campus

All individuals parking on campus must acquire a parking permit, which is linked to the vehicle’s license plate. If you are renting a car, please wait to purchase a parking permit until you have the license plate information. Permits can be purchased online or in person at the Transportation Office. Please note that everything is electronic; there is no physical permit required for display.

Why should you attend the workshop?

Low-cost, rapid, and reliable methods for determining chemical composition are increasingly essential in research and in practical product-selection settings. Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy offers a powerful solution for agricultural science, enabling fast, non-destructive analysis of a wide range of materials.

Recent technological advances have made NIR instruments more accessible and affordable than ever. Researchers and practitioners can now choose from a variety of systems, including benchtop instruments and portable handheld spectrometers, supported by software platforms with diverse tools for data processing and model development.

During this three-day workshop, participants will gain practical insight into the principles, applications, and implementation of NIR spectroscopy in agricultural research and decision-making.

Workshop Modules

Day 1: The Basics of NIR and Trends

• Foundations of NIR
• Parts of the NIR instrumentation and types of spectrometers
• New trends in NIR technology

Day 2: Open-source Chemometrics for NIR Spectroscopy

• Foundations of R and chemometric modeling
• Hands-on NIR data acquisition
• Model development in R
• Model testing and deployment

Day 3: Applications, Model Life-cyle Assesment, Transferability

• Applications of NIR
• Validation and model life-cycle assessment
• Transferability of NIR models between NIR devices/platforms
• Target-domain sample selection

Workshop Facilitators

Miguel S. Castillo, Professor, Crop and Soil Sciences, NC State

Juan J. Acosta, Associate Professor & Director, Camcore, NC State

Marçal Plans Pujolras, Head of Global NIR Applications, Buchi

Leonardo Ramirez-Lopez, Head of Data Science, Buchi

Matthew Eady, Orion RTP

Questions

For questions regarding registration and logistics, contact Bessy Velazquez ([email protected]). For all other questions, contact Dr. Miguel Castillo ([email protected]).