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

Elaniti，Camgrain和Rothamsted Research正在共同努力，从更实惠和无处不在的数据源中确定英国小麦农场土壤微生物信息的可行性。面向消费者的组织（快速消费品和超市）越来越需要可追溯的数据来证明原料的可持续性，这些组织已经表现出供应链或“嵌入”投资的意愿。这些组织还制定了雄心勃勃的可持续采购和排放目标，因此已经开始在经济上激励农民采用再生做法。然而，这种再生过渡对个体农民来说充满了风险，他们不确定哪些干预措施适合他们的土壤需求。为英格兰农民提供这些信息将降低他们向再生农业过渡的风险，通过降低投入成本和增加作物价值，农场盈利能力可提高78%\[9\]。健康肥沃的土壤是人类饮食的核心，我们消耗的所有食物中有95%是由土壤生产的。然而，占英国小麦种植总量43%的英国小麦种植者的处境正变得越来越黯淡。土壤退化现在每年花费英国12亿英镑[4] -由于土壤有机含量（SOC）损失，土壤压实导致的生产力降低，以及土壤侵蚀导致的水质下降。微生物丰度和多样性的下降可以作为土壤压实和侵蚀的早期预警信号，以及由于微生物在碳，氮，营养循环[7]。反过来，“健康”的土壤微生物组会对作物产生有价值的下游影响，包括提高营养密度[14]。因此，土壤微生物是长期土壤健康变化的高度敏感指标，也是作物产量的关键决定因素，特别是在小麦中。今天农民测量微生物群落的唯一方法是通过解释昂贵的DNA分析的复杂结果。由于这对大多数农民来说成本过高，他们通常只依赖物理化学分析[8]，限制了大量营养素的信息该项目采用多学科方法，利用Rothamsted Research的科学专业知识和Elaniti的机器学习技术，与来自英国最大的农业合作社之一的农民一起展示土壤健康测量的创新方法的可行性，该项目旨在使土壤微生物信息民主化，使英格兰的小麦农民能够改善土壤健康，促进经济上可行的，可持续的和可扩展的再生农业转型。

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.