Overview

Our project this year has been the development of a soil testing kit that is intended to be used by anyone from commercial dairy and vegetable farmers to community gardens and the avid home gardener. This kit includes colorimetric indicators for nutrients that are important for crop health and yield, such as phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, and copper. With very little required materials that are already largely available for many farmers, our kit makes accurate soil testing accessible to a large number of local communities.

The first community we decided to focus on was farmers who grow commercial vegetable crops and feed crops for animals. These farmers own large plots of land with many acres that require regular testing to compare current soil nutrient levels to past ones to understand how soil nutrients are changing. Easy-to-understand, simple instructions lend to the kit’s accessibility. Additionally, our kit only requires that farmers have clean water available to them since all other materials will be included in this kit. This will allow even those who lack conventional testing supplies such as refrigeration, centrifuge machines, and soil probes to use our kit. Information about nutrient levels provided by our kit provides vital information for farmers that is used for ordering and layering fertilizer on fields to maximize crop health and growth and minimize yearly fertilizer costs.

Alternatively, our project can also be an excellent resource for small-plot gardeners who have an acre or less of land that they are using to grow. This testing kit will allow gardeners to understand where nutrient deficits exist in their plant beds so that fertilizer use can be minimized while still supplementing the soil with fertilizers or organic compost substitutes.

Check out User Instructions to see how people would use our kit!