Measuring Soil Respiration To Assess Soil Health

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Researchers and agronomists alike are proclaiming the benefits of healthy soils to farming operations. But defining soil health, and measuring it, is not always so clear. Adam Koeppel of Agrology says his company is assessing soil health by measuring soil respiration to indicate the biological activity in a soil.

Koeppel… “The breathing of the soil is a key vital sign to soil health. And what we figured out how to do is how to measure that in real time and then analyze it and distill all that data into insights that can help customers understand how their agricultural practices are affecting their soil, respiration, and therefore their soil health. Because that respiration, you know, it's indicative of the soil microbial activity, it's indicative of root exudate and plant vigor. It's proportional to soil moisture, all of these other things that are really important. It's influenced by soil algae, just like anything you can think of that's living in the soil from the plant roots through the microbiome affects that respiration. So it's a great thing to measure and analyze to provide that feedback to the farmer on how their activities are affecting soil health.”

That’s Adam Koeppel of Agrology.