Kanpur: The Portable Soil Testing Device developed at IIT here, obtains soil health parameters of agricultural fields with a recommended dose of fertilisers.
The invention uses Near Infra-red Spectroscopy technology to deliver real-time soil analysis findings to smart phones via an embedded mobile app called BhuParikshak, which is accessible on the Google Play Store.
The gadget can detect nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, organic carbon, clay content, and cation exchange capacity, among other soil factors.It also specifies the amount of fertiliser to apply to the land and crops.
"I am delighted for the team from IIT Kanpur for developing such a novel device that will assist individual farmers in assessing the health of their soil in almost no time," Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT-K said.
The device has the highest testing capacity of any soil. It tests up to 1 lakh soil test samples. It brings in use only 5-gram soil sample for detecting macro nutrients in the soil.
After the dirt is put into the 5 -cm- long cylindrical shaped gadget, it connects to the cellphone through Bluetooth and begins 90 seconds of soil analysis.
The mobile application is made user-friendly through the user interface which is available in local languages.
