IIT-Roorkee students develop affordable soil testing solutions

New Delhi IIT-Roorkee students have developed cost-effective soil testing solutions that can be used by farmers to boost crop productivity through balanced use of fertilisers.

Students from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee have developed a device called Solving Nitrogen Application Problems (SNAP) to mitigate the ineffective use of fertilisers which leads to downsizing of the crop yield.

SNAP, an optical imaging application, can determine the optimum fertiliser input by ‘multi-spectral imaging’ of crop leaves, a statement said.

The device has been developed by a team led by third year B-Tech student Ekdeep Lubana with Ankit Bagaria, Utkarsh Seth Saxena and Anisha Godha. It is a programmed camera module, used to click the image of leaves and determine the nitrogen content in the soil.

“Poor awareness and illiteracy among rural farmers forces them to believe that the low yield is due to insufficient usage of fertilisers. ‘SNAP’ aims to bring the power of ‘Smart Soil Analysis’ into the hands of the farmers,” it said.

Ekdeep Lubana, B-Tech student, IIT Roorkee said, “Our main aim was to provide farmers with a low-cost and easy solution to determine the amount of fertiliser to be used”.

The application will guide farmers in a simple manner on how much fertiliser is to be used on the basis of analysis of the leaves, Lubana said.

“Team SNAP and the project stood out among 900 teams from more than 70 countries and emerged as the winner of the Ericsson Innovation Awards 2017 and were awarded 25,000 Euros,” the statement said.