SOILPROS

Team

Current agricultural practices largely bypass the role of biota and biodiversity in soils and substrates. Intensive agriculture has resulted in improved yields but also in a food production system that emits growing quantities of greenhouse gases and have little resilience against extreme weather and soil pathogens. The Netherlands and other countries in the European Union want to make food production more sustainable, restore the natural resilience of crops against diseases and improve air and water quality. SoilProS project aims to solve this by using artificial intelligence (AI)-based machine learning to make soil/substrate biodiversity of food production systems predictable with respect to the effectiveness of practical measures that enable food production with fewer emissions to atmosphere, ground and surface water, greater water buffer capacity and disease suppressiveness.

Project highlights

Agriculture centred on soil multi-functionality
Based on understanding how soil biodiversity relates to ecosystem multi-functionality, SoilProS research consortium will provide fundamental building blocks for sustainable food production

AI-assisted predictions
AI-based machine learning will be our central tool to use soil biodiversity data to predict practical measures that enhance ecosystem multi-functionality under given soil types and land uses.

Experimental feedback
AI-based predictions will be experimentally tested and fed back into machine learning.

People + researchers + companies
Action perspectives co-created and tested along with farmers using soil and/or organic substrates in practice.

Research consortium

5 universities throughout the Netherlands.
11 companies from the private agricultural sector.
8 partners from the societal community.

More information

Project website: https://soilpros.nioo.knaw.nl/en