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• The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, has developed a portable testing device that can detect the soil health in just 90 seconds through a mobile application using merely five grams of the soil as sample.

About portable device for soil testing developed by IIT Kanpur

• The portable and wireless soil testing device requires five grams of dry soil as a sample for detecting macronutrients present in it.
• This first-of-its-kind invention is based on near Infrared spectroscopy technology that provides real-time soil analysis report on smartphones with an embedded mobile application, named Bhu Parikshak, available on Google Play Store.
• The technology has been transferred to an agri-tech company, AgroNxt Services Private Limited.
• Once the soil is poured into a 5 cm-long cylindrical shaped device, it connects itself with the mobile through Bluetooth and starts analysing the soil for 90 seconds.
• After the analysis, the results appear on the screen in the form of a soil health report, which is accessible on Bhu Parikshak cloud service with a unique ID. The report also comes with a recommended dose of fertilisers.
• The device can detect six important soil parameters, including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and organic carbon.
• It also recommends the required dose of fertilisers for the field and crops. The rapid soil testing device will assist individual farmers for obtaining soil health parameters of agricultural fields with recommended doses of fertilisers.
• The device can test up to one lakh soil test samples, which is the highest testing capability of a device among its predecessors.
• The mobile application is made user-friendly through the user interface, which is available in local languages, so that even a Class 8 passout can easily handle the device and the mobile application.