SpecSolo: A Brazilian technology that promises to revolutionize soil analysis
Soil analysis is fundamental to modern agriculture. The first step to evaluate soil fertility is collecting samples, followed by chemical and physical analyses, which purpose is the recommendation of appropriate quantities of limestone and fertilizers. The process ends with the application of these inputs and crop monitoring.
Nowadays, the evaluation of the availability of nutrients and phytotoxic elements in soils is performed by laboratory processes, often complex and time-consuming, requiring skilled labor, besides producing waste. It is in this context that rises SpecSolo, a technological package developed by Embrapa Solos (Rio de Janeiro) in partnership with a private sector, which promises to perform soil analyses in a non-destructive, fast, economical, and without waste generation. Soil fertility analyses are performed in less than 30 seconds and should attend small, medium and big farmers. Initially, the system has two parameters: granulometry and organic matter.
SpecSolo is based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy – NIR, Big Data techniques and Artificial Intelligence, and work as follows: the molecular vibrations of the soil sample are detected by a sensor of the automatized equipment, named SpecSolo-Scan, which has the capacity to analyze 40 sample simultaneously. SpecSolo-Scan sensors communicate with a database of over 1 million representative soil samples from all over the country, using cloud-based software, which uses precise and efficient algorithms for multivariate data calibration. The analyses results are automatically available on the SpecSolo portal.
The Specsolo Platform has a digital assistant to assist in the elaboration of liming and fertilization recommendations for more than 800 crops. Besides, farmers can use SampSoil, a mobile and tablet app that allows georeferencing of the points sampled by scanning the bar code present in the collection package.
Analyzing the soil has never been easier! Now, the farmer will only need to take his soil sample to an agreed laboratory to get accurate results in real time. Sensational, is not it?
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