New Delhi: The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is planning to introduce a sensor-based Digital Soil Mapping system. For this purpose, work is underway to develop a comprehensive module which will help to reduce chemical-based testings and extra manpower to find out soil properties.
Speaking about the development of sensor-based digital soil mapping that will be a new-age technology, Dr Priyabrata Santra, Principal Scientist and Head of Division in ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur told ETV Bharat, "The work on the development of sensor-based digital soil mapping is underway. Once this new-age technology starts functioning, it will help to reduce chemicals in soil testing and extra manpower to manage all the processes."
Santra pointed out, "The new technology will also cut short the extra time to get soil results. Currently, the testing process takes at least 7-10 days but sensor-based scanning will reduce the time and it would likely take 2-3 days to declare properties of soil."
Digital soil mapping helps to get actual properties in the soil like depth, texture, pH, organic carbon, phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen. This data information will help the farmers to use accurate amounts of fertilizer, urea, and water in fields as per the requirement of the soil which will reduce global warming issues.
"Currently, we collect samples from different areas and farmers bring soils to labs,then we test them to know the properties of the samples and disseminate the data to farmers. After developing the digital platform, the farmers will be able to monitor the soil information through their smartphones," the scientist said.
"We collect soil samples from different places of a location and then apply statistical modelling to estimate for preparing properties of soil. Any farmer in that location can get this data of soil properties for better farming. This system is used across the country by different institutes and Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK)," Santra said.
Santra said excess urea, fertilizer, and water leave a negative in farming and land but the farmers will get benefits from soil property data to use the actual quantity of fertility and urea to get healthy crops.
