According to SRC, this could provide farmers with accurate, repeatable soil health monitoring at farm scale. Agronomists and farmers could use this information to guide precision improvements to soil health, maximising yield and increasing revenue with minimum chemical input.
The pilot project is being conducted using SRC’s Tom monitoring robot to take soil samples with PES Technologies’ soil health sensor mounted on the robot. The sensor detects Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) released from the soil. In the wider project, the sensor output is being correlated with information about 10+ soil health indicators, including microbial biomass and soil organic matter content.
The project consortium comprises PES Technologies, Small Robot Company, NIAB-EMR, HL Hutchinson Limited, the University of Essex and the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich and is funded by the government’s Innovate UK grant programme.
Trial sites include the Lockerley Estate in Hampshire, where robots are a key part of its regenerative farming strategy.
The consortium is using machine learning approaches to profile soil health directly in the field by measuring 'soil gases' (microbial Volatile Organic Compounds effluxed by various soil types and cropping systems) as well as trialling the sensing technology for automated, continuous in-field sensing with the SRC robots. Microbial VOCs other than carbon dioxide have not previously been exploited in a practical low-cost, on-farm method for measurement of soil health.
The next phase of the robotics-part of the project is for NIAB-EMR, the UK’s largest independent research organisation specialising in agriculture and horticulture, to conduct ground truthing on soil health data gathered. Samples collected by the robot will be sent to the lab for testing and analysis, and compared with the PES sensor data. This will be conducted in the autumn, including at five existing on-farm sites at Lockerley Estate, including comparisons with five years of historical data.
Commenting Andrej Porovic, CEO, PES Technologies said,“Healthy soils are key to profitable farming. Poor soil health is reducing the productivity and profitability of the agricultural industry worldwide – in particular, it is impacting yields and soils’ resilience to changes in climate. There are more micro-organisms per gram of healthy soil than there are people on the planet – but without these living microbes, soil is not soil, but just dust. Choosing the right way to improve soil health is vital. We believe that putting our technology on SRC’s robots would be a real game-changer.”
