10116097SoilScope: Machine learning-enabled acoustic monitoring and management for agricultural soil health and biodiversityClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKCurrently, farmers have few ways to measure their farm's soil health other than labour-intensive manual sampling and inspection or hiring an expensive agronomy consultant. These solutions are not scalable and do not provide the continuous monitoring required to evidence improved farming techniques or baseline future biodiversity/natural capital markets. Acoustic monitoring is emerging as a promising non-invasive technique to provide distributed and continuous measurements of the biological and physical properties of soil and its ecosystem. Biofonic, a new UK startup formed by 2x alumni of the renowned Innovation Design Engineering Masters programme at Imperial and the Royal College of Art, is pioneering a new technique for continuous, distributed monitoring. This 18 month industrial research project is led by Biofonic in collaboration with Harper Adams University and Scotland's Rural College (SRUC). Trials of the newly developed TRL6 demonstrator will take place at farms associated with SRUC, Harper Adams, and others. By 2034, Biofonic's sensors will be monitoring 2.6m+ hectares of UK farmland and the company will have hired 62 technical staff and reached a cumulative turnover of £52.5m.