AGLIBS, recently launched for real-time soil analysis, is one of the solutions that integrate an action by the Instituto Mato-grossense do Algodão (IMAmt) to present new technologies developed by the institution itself and partners to producers. The proposal is to publicize new forms of management aimed at making cotton farming and the production system adopted in Mato Grosso sustainable, with the cultivation of cotton after the soybean harvest.
The equipment will be demonstrated on a field day this Friday (06), at station 5, at the Training and Technological Diffusion Center of the Regional Center Ampa/IMAmt, in Campo Verde, by researcher Ladislau Martin Neto from Embrapa Instrumentação (São Carlos, SP), the unit responsible for developing AGLIBS, together with the startup Agrorobótica. The company will be represented by directors Aida Magalhães and Fábio Angelis.
“Being able to count on a new technology to perform soil analysis quickly, accurately and at a lower cost is very important for producers because this will help them optimize the application of agricultural inputs, generating lower costs and making cotton farming and other crops more sustainable. inserted in the production system adopted in Mato Grosso”, says the president of Ampa and IMAmt, Alexandre Schenkel.
According to Schenkel, the field day is also a moment of rapprochement and exchange of experience between the public and researchers, consultants and technicians from IMAmt and partner institutions or companies, who will present their technologies to around 300 people.
Equipment analyzes 1.500 samples per day
AGLIBS analyzes soils quickly, cleanly and economically accessible to rural producers. The innovation does not generate chemical waste and is capable of analyzing 1.500 samples per day, providing data on the amount of organic carbon in the soil, texture (sand, silt and clay content) and pH.
The device uses laser-induced plasma optical emission spectroscopy (LIBS), the same one embarked on the Rover Curiosity, a robot from the North American space agency, NASA, to discover the presence of water on Mars. The technology is being used in a pioneering way in Brazil and allows real-time evaluation in the laboratory, while conventional analyzes take a few days to provide results.
With more than 15 years of work in the use of optics and photonics, Embrapa researcher Débora Milori informs that LIBS was used because it is a technique that analyzes the sample with little or no preparation, it is a fast-acting, low-cost system and can identify elements simultaneously in a small amount of sample, 0,5 grams, for example.
She explains that the LIBS system shoots a high-energy laser at the sample, generating a plasma that emits light from the atoms and ions present in the soil. “The light emission from each element is like a fingerprint that makes it possible to identify the atom in the plasma. This way, it is possible to quantify carbon, nutrients and contaminants in the soil”, explains the scientist.
The new technology is the first result of the partnership between the Embrapa Instrumentação innovation ecosystem and a startup focused on agribusiness (agritech). From this union, Agrorobótica was born, founded in 2015, which will make the technology available to the market in the second half of the year.
The company is betting on a differentiated service delivery model for the new technology. AGLIBS will be in laboratories, cooperatives, resellers and companies involved in precision agriculture in franchise form. The producer will forward his georeferenced soil samples to a franchisee and the result will be sent to an analysis center at Agrorobótica, where it will be passed through an artificial intelligence model that will calculate the desired parameters.
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