Research team secures funding to help farmers assess soil quality in real time
Researchers from the Global Centre for Environmental Remediation have secured funding to help develop a rapid, affordable field-based testing kit to helps farmers analyse soil quality and improve agricultural outputs.
Underperforming agricultural soils cost Australian farmers billions of dollars in lost revenue each year, yet traditional soil sampling and analysis techniques are often too time consuming and too expensive for farmers.
Dr Liang Wang and Laureate Professor Ravi Naidu will collaborate with industry partners and leading soil researchers from across Australia to validate and further develop a prototype testing kit that couples ‘lab-on-a-chip’ and smartphone technologies to improve soil analysis in real-time. The in-field testing toolkit will help land managers more accurately assess indicators of soil health, including pH levels, organic matter, nutrients, moisture levels and microbial activity.
By using lab-on-a-chip technology, the soil testing toolkit can integrate hundreds of functional parts into a single run, which can give farmers user-friendly analysis in-field and in real time. But some functions - like assessing pH levels - rely on farmers interpreting colour reactions. Light conditions, light intensity and soil background colours mean the human eye sometimes gets it wrong.
To rectify this, the toolkit includes a smartphone application that uses colour and light sensors from the phone's camera to enhance the accuracy of pH level assessment. It also uses GPS technology to help farmers connect to weather stations so they can access real-time meteorological data such as temperature, air pressure and humidity.
Dr Liang Wang, who will lead the collaborative two-year project, hopes the research will lead to the development of a fully validated mobile decision support tool that saves farmers time and money while helping them boost their agricultural outputs.
Funding for the research project has been provided by the Soil Cooperative Research Centre (Major Investment Round 5).
Collaborators include researchers from the University of Tasmania, Charles Sturt University, Federation University as well as industry partners Burdekin Productivity Services Ltd and Herbert Cane Productivity Services Ltd.
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The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.