Exciting news about PestNu’s Irish partner, Tellab!
Their abstract titled ‘Rapid evaluation of nitrate from soil pore water for real-time decision making in a drip irrigation agricultural system of Southern Spain’, got accepted and will be presented at AquaConSoil2023 conference, which is going to take place in Prague, Czech Republic, in September 2023!
The abstract is the following:
Continuous nitrate monitoring in agricultural soil is being increasingly regulated in areas where concerns of eutrophication have been detected. Analysis of nitrate is usually carried out at external labs for which a large sample of soil pore water has to be collected using a lysimeter hammered into the soil and left for hours or days depending on the soil moisture. Degradation of the sample on exposure to environmental conditions during collection is highly likely especially in dry and hot conditions so these results are not representative of the real concentration of nitrate in soil. Moreover, the results take several days to be reported back from the lab and no immediate decision-making is possible for fertiliser dosing. Alternative nitrate meters that allow for a small sample, such as portable ion selective electrodes, have shown promise but require calibration before each analysis, present low accuracy and are frequently impacted by interferences due to other soil compounds.
A portable nitrate/nitrite analyser based on ion chromatography and UV-LED detection was capable of achieving analysis of nitrate from soil pore water collected from lysimeters in just under 10 minutes using a 1 mL sample with 95% accuracy. The detection range is between 1 ppm and 500 ppm NO3 and NO2 detection is also available. When the sample is injected, a syringe filter is attached to remove particles and 1 mL of sample pushed through the system. The sample is injected through an IC column, eluted with 120 mM NaCl eluent and the absorbance is detected using a UV-LED and photodiode. The chromatogram generated is automatically integrated and the results are transmitted to the user via an Internet of Things (IoT) enabled platform. No hazardous chemicals are used, no highly technical personnel are needed for its operation and no service is required for at least 600 sample runs.
This analyser will be deployed in Southern Spain as part of the EU Horizon 2020 PestNu project for frequent monitoring of nitrate in agricultural soil and for enabling improved fertiliser management in addition to compliance with local regulations. As part of the project, other parameters are currently being developed for analysis of nutrients in soil pore water.
The authors are: Valeria Arenas-Montaño, Meritxell Grau Butinyac, Simon Bluett, Ángel Martínez López, Pedro Mínguez Alcaraz and Eoin Murray.
The DOI of the publication is the following: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-023-01200-w
You can find more information for this conference at the following link: https://www.aquaconsoil.com/aquaconsoil-2023/