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Portable XRF is a rapid, mobile, high throughput, and potentially cost effective instrumental analytical technique capable of elemental assessment. It is widely used for environmental assessment of soils in a variety of contexts such as agriculture and pollution both in-situ and ex-situ, to varying levels of success. Portable XRF performance for soil analysis is often validated against wet chemistry techniques but a range of factors may give rise to elementally dependent disparities affecting accuracy and precision assessments. These include heterogeneity, analysis times, instrument stability during analyses, protective thin films, incident X-rays, sample thickness, sample width, analyte interferences, detector resolution, power source fluctuations and instrumental drift. Light elements comprising water and organic matter (i.e. carbon, oxygen) also negatively affect measurements due to X-ray scattering and attenuation. The …