After decades of monoculture farming, extensive use of fertilizers and climate change,
the Soil Health is at an historic low
As a result our food security is at risk while crops are getting less nutritious. Farmers face soil organic carbon decreases and the soil biodiversity is under threat, which makes their soils less resilient and with very little water retention.
To tackle this we are developing new monitoring solutions for soil life and crop. Together they form our Soil Health Suite. A unique synergy visualizing results of management decsions both from above and below ground.
Soil Health is “the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans” (USDA). Now it is recognized that soil ecosystem services provide economic returns, the value of this changes as the level of the asset, Soil Health, changes. To be able to quantify this value a new set of indicators is needed.
Until now there is no good and practical way to measure and monitor Soil Life.
We are developing the new standard for functional biodiversity and ecosytem services.
This standard will allow us to optimize the total Soil Asset Value.
Soil Life Monitoring
To monitor the (functional) biodiversity, we have identified a new technology, known in the medical industry, which enables us to study and identify much more soil life per sample and analyse the data using our AI/CV models. This technology will yield much more data and will be much faster than old-lab-based microscopy. We started by modelling nematodes because of their abundance and numerous ecological functions they indicate and perform.
“The big problem in measuring soil biodiversity is that we only work with derived parameters, not with objective measurements”
Jan de Ruyter – ABN AMRO Feb 2023
Did you know there are ~60 billion nematodes for every human on earth?
Nematode AnalysisNematode Based Indices (NBIs) are well studied in academia. However, they are hard and expensive to determine with traditional analysis methods.
Finally, with our new method and AI-based technology NBIs become commercially interesting.
The use of NBIs will become increasingly important in providing valuable information on soil health and functioning, especially considering the urgent need for more sustainable land use.
- Count and identify nematodes in sample
- Sort into functional groups
- Calculate Nematode Based Indices (NBIs)
- Report and give advice based on NBI results
Crop Monitoring
We offer crop monitoring services to visualize data and AI modelling results. Here one can get a complete view of the status of your crop/fields, get recommendations and browse through long-term monitoring. Use drone and satellite images to e.g., monitor growth progress, get recommendations, discover diseases and estimate plant densities and yields.
• Monitor crop from above (e.g., drones, tractors, satellites, etc.)
• AI applications for management decisions (e.g., trimming, pollinating, irrigation, pests)
• Determine field metrics (e.g., plant count, plant density, locate weeds)
• Great synergy with Life monitor visualizing results of management decisions both above and below ground
Use Cases for the Soil Health Suite
• Optimizing soil and crop management for farmers and consultants
• Minimizing expenditures like fertilizers,pesticides, and excessive tillage
• Longterm monitoring of soil quality and crop growth
• Reporting and validation for sustainable practices
• Tracking of ecological quality in earth moving, contaminated soils, and soil remediation
• Accounting biodiversity and ecosystem services
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