www.metos.at Werksweg 107, 8160 Weiz, Austria | Tel.: ++43(0)3172-5521 Fax: ++43(0)3172-552123 | e-mail: [email protected] TURNING INFORMATION INTO PROFITS - the mobile soil nutrient laboratory METOS NPK ® Integration of soil nutrient analyses to a single microchip 3 4 4 How do you know if a field needs ferlizers? Wrong ferlizer applicaons leads to addional costs and environmental hazards, but there is currently no measurement equipment for simple and inexpensive on-site nutrient analysis. Pessl Instruments GmbH has developed a mobile soil nutrient analysis device based on modern Lab-on-a-chip technology. This integrates the funconality of a laboratory on a single microchip. Why this technology? Are my plants hungry? The most important ferlizer is nitrate (NO ). Nitrate can be washed out easily by rain and can migrate to deeper layers of soil – the available amount of nitrate is therefore oſten hard to esmate and over- or undersupply of nutrients is the consequence. Other important plant nutrients are Potassium (K) Phosphate (P O ) and Ammonium (NH ). With the current technology, a soil sample has to be taken and has to be sent to a laboratory for nutrient analysis. In future, it will be sufficient to flush a soil sample with an extracon soluon and do the analysis quickly in field with the Metos® NPK with this special microchip. The results are displayed in real me and you get an immediate response whether addional ferlizer is needed or not. With Metos® NPK you get on-site analyses of soil samples at low cost and without me delay. Metos® NPK measures concentraons of NO , NH , K and P O to provide this important support for your ferlizaon decisions. With this data, you can achieve environmental sustainable and economic use of valuable resources. How does the technology work? The filtered sample soluon is simply injected to a capillary to which a high electric voltage is applied. Many of the solved chemical compounds are electrically charged and therefore start to migrate in the electric field. Every molecule type migrates with an individual speed through the liquid medium, according to its molecule size and charge. The sample ingredients are separang and reach a detector one aſter another at different migraon mes. By this process, the concentraon of each sample compound can be measured individually. This technology also works for on-site measure- ments in field condions and can be operated by users without laboratory knowledge. The measurement data is related to GPS coordinates and is sent via telecommunicaon to our web-cloud (www.fiedclimate.com), where it saved and can be accessed by several users. Further on, the transfer of the data to machine-readable formats is under development, allowing the automac site specific variable rate applicaon with precision farm machinery (e.g. fer- lizer spreaders, sprayer etc). 2 5 2 5 3