About the Project:
Project Aim
I4S is targeted towards the design of an integrated system for fertilizer recommendations and improvement of soil functions regarding nearly every square meter of soil.
Motivation
A detailed assessment of soil properties and a deeper understanding of soil processes are prerequisites for a site-specific and thus resource-saving and ecofriendly soil management.In agricultural practice, however, technologies for site-specific fertilization and tillage are still not widespread. The high demand on input data is one of the main reasons why the modeling and prediction of soil nutrient dynamics is not regularly used in practice. In particular, cost-efficient methods for detecting relevant soil properties such as soil type, nutrient, and humus content are lacking as well as easy-to-use decision support systems.
Expected Results
The outcome of the project will include new soil sensors and new mobile sensor platforms for soil mapping. A set of soil and crop models will be developed specifically adapted to process the sensor readings. These models will form the core of a decision support system which will provide guidance on site-specific fertilization of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and lime.
Publications
- Impact of potassium fertilisation on mobile proximal gamma-ray spectrometry: case study on a long-term field trial
- Predicting key soil properties from Vis-NIR spectra by applying dual-wavelength indices transformations and stacking machine learning approaches
- Shifted excitation Raman difference spectroscopy for soil component identification and soil carbonate determination in the presence of strong fluorescence interference
- Process-Based Modelling of Soil–Crop Interactions for Site-Specific Decision Support in Crop Management
- Future area expansion outweighs increasing drought risk for soybean in Europe