Originally reported and written in May 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content.

Roughly five decades ago, getting a yield of nearly 2 tonnes per hectare required 54 kg of fertiliser per hectare. Today, you’d need about 280 kg to get the same yield. This indicates poor soil health, thanks to the improper and imbalanced use of chemical fertilisers. 

“This results in plant degradation and loss of productivity. Without complete knowledge, farmers keep on adding fertilisers, which only worsens crop yield,” Dr Rajul Patkar, CEO and co-founder of Pune-based Proximal Soilsens Technologies, tells The Better India.

Experts suggest that farmers carry out soil testing to decide whether their current management is diminishing future productivity, and hence, profits. Dr Patkar also points out that current soil testing methods in India are too complicated, as farmers have to send a sample to an agriculture lab, which takes at least 15 days to show results — a factor that causes an aversion to soil testing among farmers.

“By the time they get the results, farmers have already added fertilisers to the soil so they can sow seeds on time. We have 14 crore farmers in India, but we hardly have 3,000 labs for soil testing,” she adds.

To address this problem and increase awareness among farmers for soil testing before every round of sowing, the scientist, along with Dr Mukul Singh has recently developed NutriSens. This, they claim, is the world’s smallest soil testing system, which is portable,........

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