ecoSchemeN

Title: Digital Precision Fertilization for Increasing Nitrogen Efficiency in Varied Heterogeneous Fields

Project Partners: Rauch Landmaschinenfabrik GmbH, Chair of Agromechatronics TU Munich

Maintaining soil fertility as the foundation of agricultural production requires targeted fertilization that enables environmentally and climate-friendly plant production through demand-based and low-emission applications. The application-oriented research and development in this project, involving collaboration between industry, science, and practice, drives joint innovations for efficient and sustainable agriculture, achieving key environmental goals by reducing nitrogen surpluses. The entrepreneurial ingenuity combined with scientific excellence brings technological advancements directly to farmers, significantly contributing to climate, environmental, and resource protection. Farmers are directly involved in the optimisation process, evaluating the fertiliser optimisation designed as a "Glass Box", a concept that ensures transparency and allows for external scrutiny, contributing to its continuous development.

The innovations of this project consortium contribute to climate, environmental, and resource protection, as well as to the economic performance and competitiveness of the agricultural sector. The project aims to derive optimal, field-specific fertilisation levels by combining precise distribution technology, highly accurate tractor-based sensors, and sensory data collection using smartphones, simple handheld devices, drones, and satellites through the GreenWindows concept. An app will also be developed to determine crops' biomass and nitrogen status using the smartphone camera. This is expected to provide a cost-effective alternative to tractor-mounted plant sensors for farmers. The GreenWindows concept uses reference plots in the field to derive optimal fertilisation levels for the rest of the field.

In collaboration with the industrial partner, a digital, user-friendly version will be developed, allowing farmers to determine optimal fertilization levels on-the-go or as an offline post-hoc measure and integrate them into current or future management. Nitrogen mineralization will also be recorded and incorporated into the fertilization optimization. A digital advancement of the TUM Nmin quick test, a tool that measures the nitrogen available to plants in the soil, will enable farmers to easily and cost-effectively determine the Nmin value on-site.

The project approach will be tested for field-specific application on a TUM test farm and in conventional farms.