Nerit´e

Today, 60-90% of all nitrogen fertilisers applied by farmers are wasted. This waste is costly for farms and can only be reduced through soil analysis and optimized application. In addition to the economic challenges, under- and over-application of nitrogen to soils causes ecological problems such as acidification of groundwater and soil erosion. The consequences are restrictions in the use of agricultural land, so-called red areas. Existing solutions for determining nutrients in agricultural land are expensive and time-consuming laboratory analyses. The Nerit'e team is developing a disruptive approach to precision farming with its spectroscopy-based soil analyzer. This enables farmers to determine nitrogen and nitrate concentrations directly on site on the respective agricultural land with direct relevance to operations. Compared to laboratory analyses, farmers benefit from a cost advantage of up to 84% and process times are reduced from weeks to just a few seconds. The technology to be developed during the Innovation Sprint has the potential for dynamic and continuous measurement of various nutrients and is being developed as an extension for various agricultural machines.