Public Funding for P.E.S. Technologies Limited

PES Technologies is requesting funding to cover costs that have become necessary for the successful delivery of Innovate-UK project 105534\. Feeding 9.8 billion people in 2050 in a climate change context will depend on our skills to keep soils alive. Food production is directly correlated with soil health. To manage and improve soil health, farmers need reliable information about the chemical, physical and biological properties of their soils. There are methods available to assay soil nutrients and determine the physical properties of soils. Only respiration-based methods are currently available to farmers to measure the microbial contributions to soil health, but these give no information on the microbiota present and are affected by other sources of CO2 in the soil. Next-generation sequencing has potential as a biological indicator of soil health, but the costs are high, the tests take hours to conduct, and the data obtained requires experts in order to interpret it. Our solution is to tap into the wealth of information contained in the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by soil biota. These have been demonstrated to be excellent indicators of soil biota activity, but their detection and analysis currently requires laboratory-based instrumentation and skilled personnel. In preliminary work we developed a sensor that can detect soil VOCs and demonstrated that its responses can be correlated with soil health. In project 105534, we will determine the responses of such sensors to a wide range of different soils and cropping systems. These will be correlated with conventional soil health indicators and next-generation sequencing data. Machine learning will be used to process the data obtained to provide a cloudbased database that can be accessed directly by sensors in the field. Use of robots to deploy the sensors with associated GPS data will be investigated to provide farmers with comprehensive and fine-scale data of soil health on their farms so that they can assess the impact of farming practices on soil health and adapt these to increase soil health and productivity. Testing every square meter of land data would be unfeasibly expensive with current testing methods (£60/sample) as the average UK farm size is 930,000 sq. m.. Project 105534 is led by P.E.S. Technologies, a start-up company developed a sensor for soil VOCs. Commercial project partners include Hutchinsons and the Small Robot Company, and academic partners include NIAB-EMR, the Natural Resources Institute (University of Greenwich), and the University of Essex.

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Globally, potato has proved a valuable and nutritious staple crop driving both food security and GDP growth. In Kenya, potato ranks second in importance, after maize, and approximately 800,000 people benefit directly from potato production. However, to date, there are several challenges facing potato production, including potato cyst nematode (PCN). PCN are tiny cysts containing hundreds of eggs that hatch into juvenile nematodes that attack roots, causing up to 80% yield loss. A recent survey in Kenya showed that PCN is widespread in the main potato growing areas, so potato farmers urgently need better diagnostic tools to detect PCN. The proposed project aims to develop a PCN Assessment Tool, based on volatiles, that will then be compared to conventional and novel analyses of PCN levels, using morphological analysis, next-generation sequencing and Matrix-Assisted Laser-Desorption and Ionization Time-of-Flight Mass Spectroscopy. The outputs of the project will be of great benefit for potato farmers in Kenya, providing a quick, easy and cost effective PCN Assessment Tool. On-farm detection of PCN would aid farmers in agronomic decision making, thus leading to increased potato productivity, and greater uptake of crop rotation, which is currently lacking in Kenya

Food demand in Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to triple between 2010 and 2050 and rapid closure of the gap between current farm yields and yield potential is needed to maintain the current level of cereal self-sufficiency (approximately 80%) by 2050. Without it, the result will be massive cropland expansion with attendant biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions or vast import dependency. The aim of this project is therefore to bring affordable soil analysis to smallholder farmers across Africa to harness the benefits for investments in fertilisers to increase their yields. Our solution is to tap into the wealth of information contained in the gases released by soil biota. In preliminary work a sensor for these gases was developed and it was demonstrated that its responses can be correlated with various soil properties. In this project, we will seek to prove the that this technology can be used for sub-Sarahan soils. The project will be led by P.E.S. Technologies, a UK-based start-up company that developed the soil gas sensor, in collaboration with iSDA, a not-for-profit spin-out from the African Soil Information System (AfSIS), and World Agroforestry (ICRAF), which is a centre of science and development excellence working with farmers that is based in Kenya.

Feeding 9.8 billion people in 2050 in a climate change context will depend on our skills to keep soils alive. Food production is directly correlated with soil health. To manage and improve soil health, farmers need reliable information about the chemical, physical and biological properties of their soils. There are methods available to assay soil nutrients and determine the physical properties of soils. Only respiration-based methods are currently available to farmers to measure the microbial contributions to soil health, but these give no information on the microbiota present and are affected by other sources of CO2 in the soil. Next-generation sequencing has potential as a biological indicator of soil health, but the costs are high, the tests take hours to conduct, and the data obtained requires experts in order to interpret it. Our solution is to tap into the wealth of information contained in the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by soil biota. These have been demonstrated to be excellent indicators of soil biota activity, but their detection and analysis currently requires laboratory-based instrumentation and skilled personnel. In preliminary work we developed a sensor that can detect soil VOCs and demonstrated that its responses can be correlated with soil health. In this project we will determine the responses of such sensors to a wide range of different soils and cropping systems. These will be correlated with conventional soil health indicators and next-generation sequencing data. Machine learning will be used to process the data obtained to provide a cloud-based database that can be accessed directly by sensors in the field. Use of robots to deploy the sensors with associated GPS data will be investigated to provide farmers with comprehensive and fine-scale data of soil health on their farms so that they can assess the impact of farming practices on soil health and adapt these to increase soil health and productivity. Testing every square meter of land data would be unfeasibly expensive with current testing methods (£60/sample) as the average UK farm size is 930,000 sq. m.. The project will be led by P.E.S. Technologies, a start-up company that developed a plastic electronic sensor for soil VOCs, in collaboration with Hutchinsons, UK agronomy specialists, and the Small Robot Company. Academic partners will be NIAB-EMR, the leading UK horticultural research organisation, the Natural Resources Institute with long experience in VOC profiling, and the University of Essex with expertise in machine learning.

Soil is one of the three major natural resources essential for agricultural productivity, with the other two being air and water. Soil should be teeming with life---especially microbial life---but intensive farming practices such as frequent ploughing, the removal of crop wastes and the use of heavy machinery have degraded soils throughout the world, and the associated costs of this degradation are estimated to be $6.3--10.6 trillion. As farmer's profits are being squeezed there is considerable interest within the farming community in monitoring long-term changes in the health of their soils based on the way they farm their land. To correctly manage soil health, farmers need reliable information on the health of their soils. For this they need to be able to measure the chemical, physical, and biological properties of soil. However, farmers currently have no, or very few tools they can use to measure the biological properties of their soils. For example, current methods to assess the biological properties rely on measuring the CO2 content of soil samples, which does not provide information on the range of microbes present in the soil. Other promising techniques such as next generation DNA sequencing of soil microbes are too expensive, require experts, and provide information that is difficult to analyse (the exact roles of the vast majority of different microbial species present in a soil sample are currently unknown). In addition to CO2, microbes also release other gases called volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Despite the useful information VOCs provide on soil life, they are currently not utilized by farmers to assess soil health because the equipment to measure soil VOCs is expensive, laboratory-based, and requires trained operators. This project proposes the development of a portable, low-cost VOC sensor to overcome those constraints. The proposed sensor that can be connected to a smart phone or laptop for powerful data analysis in a cloud-based software package and will thus complement existing soil nutrient testing practiced by farmers. Coupled with visual assessments for physical properties the proposed sensor will enable farmers to make soil health assessments themselves. P.E.S. Technologies, a plastic electronics start-up, and NIAB-EMR, a horticultural research transfer organisation, propose a joint technical feasibility study to develop a tool for the detection of soil VOC profiles. Once validated for soil health testing, the same sensor architecture could be adapted for applications in healthcare, food processing, waste management and remediation of contaminated land.