Periodic Reporting for period 3 - SARMENTI (Smart multisensor embedded and secure system for soil nutrient and gaseous emission monitoring)
Período documentado: 2022-01-01 hasta 2022-12-31
SARMENTI developed an Electronic Smart System (ESS) connected to the IoT that helps the farmer monitor soil nutrients that have a direct impact on plant growth, on agricultural production, and on the farmer’s income. The system also monitors environment parameters, i.e. temperature, humidity, and gaseous emissions from fertilised soils arising from microbial interactions between added fertilisers, manures and soil organic matter. The SARMENTI project contributes to the GreenDeal strategy, especially on the farm-to-fork objectives related to nutrient losses and fertiliser use.
SARMENTI addressed the following key challenges:
- Improve selectivity, sensitivity, precision and fabrication cost of existing state-of-the-art sensors, while maintaining their functionality for a long period of use either in the soil or in the air. The partners bring to the project different cutting-edge electrochemical sensors (nanowire and potentiometric) sensitive to the concentration of soil nutrients in a liquid. They also bring environmental sensors, especially to measure the concentration of gases released in the bio-chemical cycle of natural manure. These sensors require advances to enable real time in situ soil nutrients analysis.
- Integrate some sensors in a multi-sensor frontend modules able to monitor different nutrients or environmental parameters and placed for long periods of time (ideally the whole crop duration) in difficult outdoor conditions and even buried in the case of the Soil Probe;
- Develop an appropriate packaging to increase the lifetime of the sensors, to efficiently sample the soil moisture or the surrounding air and decrease the system power consumption;
- Guarantee the integrity of electronic components and data against attempts to bring down or take advantage of the system in an unauthorized manner, by the development of a secure IoT node and its integration with secure connectivity.
By addressing these challenges, SARMENTI developed a real-time and in situ, easy-to-access, connected and cost-effective system for soil nutrients sensing (incl. N and P) that, for the first time, provided real time understanding of temporal changing soil conditions and permited precise dosing of agro-chemicals, leading to substantial improvement in fertilisation (“4R strategy”). This system complements existing spectroscopy solutions and provides decision support to the farmers regarding fertilisation thus providing farming stakeholders with the technology to conform with EU policies, such as, the Nitrates (91/676/EEC) and water frameworks (2000/60/EC) directives. The SARMENTI system also monitors different gases having health and environmental impacts, making the farmer aware of the current gaseous emissions on his land.
- Reduce nutrient losses by 50%, which will reduce the use of fertilisers by at least 20% by 2030, while ensuring no deterioration on soil fertility;
- Address pollution of air, soil and water that should be decreased towards 0, excess of nutrients in the environment being a major source of air, soil and water pollution, negatively impacting biodiversity and climate while pesticides in agriculture contributes to pollution of soil, water and air.
Farmers play a central role in meeting these objectives, and the deployment of Agri4.0 technology such as developed in SARMENTI will provide an insight in their land, especially regarding fertilisation needs, while they shall comply with actual and forthcoming EU policies. Concurrently, citizens’ request and regulations imposed by the EU and each State promote the drive for healthier and more sustainably produced food.