Turn-key Soil Salinity Detection CSR Project for Indian Farmers

A turn-key device for detecting salinity of agricultural soil by the average Indian farmer

Objective

• Identification of polymeric systems that would be suitable for selective adsorption of specific metals most responsible for high soil salinity. Preparation of defect-free, uniform, solid thin polymer film coatings. Detection and estimation of adsorbed total metal ion concentrations through electrical conductivity measurements. Testing the detector performance for total soil quality using soil wash water of real soil samples collected from various parts of south India (the fruit basket of India) such as rural Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka, the fruit basket of India. Systems engineering to package the detector into a packaged, engineered, and turn-key device.

Description

• In recent times, soil quality has become an issue of major concern for Indian agricultural farmers. Heavy transition metals (HTM) constitute a major component of soil salinity, and detecting their concentration is vital to enable the cultivator to make decisions regarding growing the right crops in the right locations. The project proposes the engineering of a packaged turn-key device which could serve as a quantitative indicator of total soil quality. The proposed detector is based on a semiconducting polymer thin film coating of well-defined geometry, onto which metal ions would be adsorbed. The total ion concentration could then be assessed through electrical conductivity measurements of the film, which serves as an easy practical index. The calibration of the device would be such that it is the total HTM ion that correlates with the observed conductometric response.

Impact

• Soil quality remains a major hurdle towards enhanced agricultural yield and productivity. In this scenario, it is imperative that farmers acquire predictability about crop yields through good soil quality assessment techniques and easy-to-handle devices. Besides, the device proposed here caters to the average Indian farmer who is scientifically inept. All these factors deem the proposed work particularly relevant to the Indian context.