The BonaRes Project I4S has officially started its phase 3

The BonaRes Project “Intelligence for Soil” (I4S) is targeted towards the design of an integrated system for fertilizer recommendations and improvement of soil functions at high spatial resolution. The project now started its third phase.

Soil properties, such as soil physical parameters and nutrient contents, may vary greatly within fields. In Intelligence for Soil (I4S), project partner institutions are developing and testing novel soil sensors that allow to measure those variations, and examine how the sensors can be integrated into mobile multi-sensor platforms for high-resolution mapping of the top- and subsoil. With this information at hand, crop dynamic models such as HERMES are being adjusted and applied to generate yield maps and to determine management and resource needs at high resolutions within fields. This in turn feeds into a decision support system (DSS) designed to guide field managers in the achievement of a resource-efficient, demand-oriented and productive precision agriculture. Farmers would thus have the necessary information to apply resources and management according to the needs of each area of a field. Phase 3 comes after six years since the beginning of the project and runs for three more years. In this phase, I4S researchers will focus on the integration of the three main components: sensor, model and decision support systems.