Advancements in Soil Nutrient Sensing for Real Time Nutrient Management based Recommendation System
Keywords:
Nutrient management, soil nutrient sensors, Electro-chemical sensors, sustainable agricultural production, crop specific decision support systemAbstract
Rapid soil testing and site specific nutrient management are the keys to improve agricultural
production sustainably to feed the growing global population, which is projected to cross 9 billion by
the end of 2050. A number of soil nutrient sensors are being developed to meet the demand. This
paper is focused on the various recent developments in the field of soil nutrient sensors and their
sensitivity for particular nutrients. The incorporation of these sensors to develop agriculture decision
support systems is also been discussed. It may be concluded that it is better to integrate a number of
sensors (optical and electrochemical) to obtain real time data on nutrient level in soil for a particular
cropping season to provide the farmers with a real time report and support. Technologies to convert
the results into farmer friendly reports and databases to store the real-time data are also very much
essential. The entire study is summarized to have an idea of the development in the field of soil
nutrient sensors globally in order to gain insights for the sustainable agricultural production in
developing countries, such as India, where cost and population are the governing factors