CREATE

Aug 14, 2023

PUBLISHED ON August 17, 2023

DURHAM, N.H. — Collaboration breeds innovation. That’s the impetus for the New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station’s Collaborative Research Enhancement Team Exploration (CREATE) program. Launched in 2022, the program was designed to spark imagination and problem-solving spanning disciplines across the University of New Hampshire, bringing together scientists—often with significantly different backgrounds—to identify and find innovative solutions to issues affecting New Hampshire and the Northeast.

“By sparking and supporting collaborations among diverse fields, such as engineering, plant science, earth science, water research and social science, we hope this program will leverage the world-class scientific brainpower across all of UNH to address today’s and tomorrow’s agriculture, food, and natural resources in New Hampshire through research and innovation—the mission of the NH Agricultural Experiment Station,” described Anton Bekkerman, NHAES director and associate dean of the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture.

“We are currently seeking proposals for this year’s round of support, but it is exciting to share the collaboration and progress of projects that began in the inaugural year,” Bekkerman added.

College of Life Sciences and Agriculture: Wil Wollheim College of Engineering and Physical Sciences: Md Shaad Mahmud

Soil organic matter, or SOM, which contains both carbon and nitrogen, plays a crucial role in growing crops as well as a variety of physical, chemical and biological processes and is directly linked to essential ecosystem services—like nutrient cycling and storage, pollutant absorption and retention and carbon dioxide sequestration. However, measuring soil carbon and nitrogen can often be a difficult and technical task for farmers and other growers to perform themselves. Developing and testing an on-the-go sensor in the Northeast can offer a simple, low-cost and immediate method for measuring soil health in real time, providing farmers, land managers and environmentalists a tool for making informed decisions about soil quality, nutrient requirements and carbon sequestration practices.

Currently, soil carbon and nitrogen are measured by collecting a field sample, followed by processing and analyzing that sample in the lab. However, this is a costly and time-consuming process that requires lab expertise to run the equipment, noted Wil Wollheim, Station scientist and a professor of natural resources and the environment in the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture.

“What we’re developing is a simple-to-use field instrument that provides both carbon and nitrogen estimates,” said Wollheim. “The tool will be much more cost-effective than the current method, and it’ll offer farmers the information they need in real-time versus waiting for a lab to provide that information back to them.”

MD Shaad Mahmud, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the UNH College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, added that the sensing system will be adaptable to different soil types and environmental conditions, which will help ensure its effectiveness within a variety of farming settings.

“The unique sensing design will provide real-time, non-destructive and continuous measurements while also featuring a user-friendly interface,” Mahmud added. “Ultimately, we’ll be empowering farmers and growers with immediate and accurate data on soil health and nutrient dynamics so that they can make timely decisions in optimizing land management and implementing sustainable agricultural practices.”

As part of this project, the researchers are developing and testing the in-situ sensing system against traditional sample and analysis methods to determine its accuracy. The sensor, which users will be able to bring to a site and position in the ground to make measurements, will measure soil organic carbon and nitrogen concentrations and calculate carbon-to-nitrogen ratios. It will be tested under real-world conditions in the UNH agricultural research fields.

For farmers and growers, the sensor will offer a multitude of applications, said Wollheim, ranging from comparing soil carbon and nitrogen levels between fields—or even between sections of the same field—to accurately calculate fertilizer needs for different crops, which will ultimately benefit the environment by reducing nutrient runoff.

“Using the sensors, farmers can save money by only purchasing and using the fertilizer that they’ll need while also ensuring that excess nutrients aren’t added to the field that could potentially leach off into the water system and degrade water quality downstream, in the streams, rivers, ponds and lakes,” Wollheim added.

This material is based on work supported by the NH Agricultural Experiment Station through joint funding from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (under Hatch award number 7004025) and the state of New Hampshire.

Note: This is the first of a 4-part article series on the NH Agricultural Experiment Station’s CREATE projects.

–NHAES

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