Precision Planting launches soil sampling system

TREMONT, Ill. — Fertilizer is the second highest crop production cost behind land, but the least understood input on how to manage.

“It’s a pressing concern and as we researched the history of where all of our techniques have come from in nutrient management, we saw that fertilizer management has evolved at a slower pace than a lot of things in agriculture,” said Dale Koch, Precision Planting product manager.

Precision Planting announced the launch on Aug. 3 of a new interconnected system that brings precision and efficiency to nutrient management.

Radicle Agronomics is new generation of tools for professional agronomists which enables them to discard manual and error-prone processes and, instead, focus their time on agronomic issues their farmer customers are facing, according to Koch.

“Soil nutrient management is a pressing challenge in modern agriculture, threatening farmer profitability and environmental stewardship,” said Koch during its launch at the Precision Technology Institute in Pontiac, Illinois.

“We created Radicle Agronomics to transform soil nutrient management with precise tools and reliable agronomic data so that agronomists are better equipped to guide farmers to superior outcomes.”

Radicle Lab, the cornerstone of this new suite of tools, is the world’s first fully automated soil laboratory. Its small footprint, self-calibration technology and the ability to run hundreds of samples unattended allow agronomists to simplify their workflow.

The lab only needs 110-volt hookup, a compressed air source and a garden hose to supply water.

The patent-pending Microflow technology built into Radicle Lab removes all human touches which occur during the traditional laboratory process, giving agronomists the confidence to produce a precision soil analysis in minutes without lifting a finger.

“Radicle Lab is a result of six years of development, dozens of pending patents and a large team of scientists and engineers all working together,” Koch said.

“This is an exciting day for our dedicated team as we introduce this simple-to-use, yet precise system.”

Collection

The second piece of the new Radicle Agronomics suite of products is GeoPress, which eliminates the chore of recordkeeping and bag handling in soil sampling.

GeoPress mounts on any field-ready vehicle and automatically blends and stores the soil sample in a geo-referenced, reusable container. These full containers are then returned to Radicle Lab where they are loaded into the system, associated with the field location and analyzed for soil nutrients.

“The job of GeoPress is to take care of mixing samples, to fill samples into GeoTubes and put caps on, associating those samples with the point in the field that you’re at so you can focus on being in the field, getting good samples and making observations,” Koch said.

GeoTube is reusable and purpose built specifically for this system. Each GeoTube container has a unique, permanent electronic RFID tag that is automatically read, and the sample is geo-tagged and recorded in the cloud. It gets cleaned in the automated lab and ready to return to the field.

Software

The last piece of the Radicle Agronomics ecosystem is a cloud-based software package that connects all steps of the field-to-lab process so agronomists can deliver superior nutrient management recommendations to their clients.

“It connects the field to the lab and the lab to the recommendation writing,” Koch noted.

“In the same way that Precision Planting has transformed the planting process over the past three decades, we are confident that Radicle Agronomics will play a transformative role in the way agronomists and farmers manage their crop nutrient needs for the decades to come,” added Bryce Baker, Precision Planting marketing manager.

“The goal for any of our products is when you pull into a field and you’re getting ready to plant or spray or soil sample, we want to take the guesswork, the questions, the fingers crossed out of the equation,” Koch said.