#water quality

Environmental Analysis Goes Mobile

Soil, paper, and a smartphone—could this be all farmers need in the future to perform environmental analyses? Quite possibly, thanks to the efforts of IBM researchers in Brazil. They’ve developed a research prototype, the AgroPad—a portable water and soil testing device powered by AI. When water or soil is placed on the microfluidics chip inside the card, it performs an on-the-spot chemical analysis of the sample, providing results in less than 10 seconds. A set of circles on the back of the card provide colorimetric test results; the color of each circle represents the amount of a particular chemical in the sample. With a dedicated mobile app, a farmer (or any user) can take a snapshot of the AgroPad and immediately receive a chemical test result. Real-time, on-site chemical analysis could be a game changer, as the traditional process of shipping samples to labs is often both time-consuming and cost-prohibitive. In the future, as the paper-based tests can be reliably performed by non-experts and instantly digitized, they could have the power to help revolutionize digital agriculture and environmental testing as we know it.

Explore the potential of mobile chemical analysis ->