SoilOptix® attaining global reach thanks in part to collaboration with NC research team

SoilOptix^®, a high-definition top-soil mapping company in Ontario, uses precision agriculture technology to help farmers understand and improve the distribution of nutrient and texture in their fields.

SoilOptix^® is now in a position of obtaining global reach with their technology, in part due to their collaboration with the NC research team through precision agriculture, GIS tech and data automation, which created process efficiencies of immense proportions and a user-friendly interface for customers.

The Tavistock company came to Niagara College’s Research & Innovation (R&I) division in 2017 as an industry partner needing support on an applied research project. One project with the Horticultural & Environmental Sciences Innovation Centre (HESIC) has evolved into a long-standing collaboration that benefits SoilOptix®, NC students, and the greater agriculture industry.

SoilOptix^® provides soil-mapping technology to farmers, giving them a deeper understanding of the variability in fertility and textural-based properties of their soil. SoilOptix® produces amazingly detailed, high-definition soil-mapping sensors (licensed under an exclusive arrangement with the Medusa Institute in the Netherlands) that can accurately map over 25 different topsoil layers, including macro- and micro-nutrients, pH, organic matter, physical properties, texture, plant available water, and carbon.

With a resolution of 335 points per acre and data that is easily implemented into variable-rate applications, SoilOptix® gives growers a deeper understanding of the variability in nutrients and textural-based properties of their field’s soil, which results in better optimization of input (fertilizer, seed, etc.) placement for economic and environmental gain.

However, this thorough data analysis and processing work uses multiple pieces of software and was taking a significant amount of time, creating a bottleneck in service.

The HESIC team, led by Mike Duncan, PhD, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Industrial Research Chair for Colleges in Precision Agriculture & Environmental Technologies, streamlined the data process and programmed the primary production into a single, efficient system. The User Interface (UI) makes this process much faster by automating much of the work. With the UI, the SoilOptix^® data analysts are realizing an eight-fold increase in their ability to process a field.