Assessing the effectiveness of affordable soil spectroscopic techniques for microbial diversity and abundance predictions on English wheat farms

Elaniti, Camgrain, and Rothamsted Research are working together to establish the feasibility of interpolating soil microbial information on English wheat farms from more affordable and ubiquitous data sources. Traceable data demonstrating the sustainability credentials of source ingredients is increasingly required by consumer-facing organisations (FMCGs and Supermarkets), who have shown a willingness for supply-chain or 'insetting' investments.

These organisations have also set ambitious sustainable-sourcing and emissions targets, so have begun financially incentivising farmers to adopt regenerative practices\[12\]. However, this regenerative transition is fraught with risk for individual farmers, who are unsure which interventions are suited for the needs of their soils. Unlocking this information for England's farmers will de-risk their transition to regenerative agriculture, with a 78%\[9\] uplift in on-farm profitability achievable through reduced input costs and increased crop value.

Healthy and fertile soils are at the heart of the human diet, with 95% of all food we consume produced by soil\[13\]. However, the situation for British wheat farmers, accounting for 43% of total UK crops grown\[1\], is becoming increasingly bleak. Soil degradation now costs the UK £1.2bn per year\[4\] - due to Soil Organic Content (SOC) losses, reduced productivity from soil compaction, and reduced water quality from soil erosion.

A decline in microbial abundance and diversity can act as an early warning sign for soil compaction and erosion, as well as preempting the amount of SOC in the soil due to the pivotal role microbes play in carbon, nitrogen, and nutrient cycling\[7\]. In turn, a 'healthy' soil microbiome elicits valuable downstream impacts on crops, including enhanced nutrient density\[14\]. Soil microbes therefore, are highly sensitive indicators of long-term soil health changes\[6\], and key determinants of crop outcomes, specifically in wheat\[7\].

The only way farmers can measure microbial communities today, is by interpreting complex results from expensive DNA analyses. As this is cost-prohibitive for most farmers, they generally rely on Physico-Chemical analyses alone\[8\], limiting information to macronutrients (NPK levels).

This project adopts a multidisciplinary approach, leveraging the scientific expertise of Rothamsted Research and machine learning know-how from Elaniti, to demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative method for soil health measurement with farmers from one of the UK's largest farming cooperatives, Camgrain.

This project aims to democratise soil microbial information, enabling England's wheat farmers to improve the health of their soils, facilitating an economically viable, sustainable, and scalable regenerative agriculture transition.