A consortium of research institutions together with Israeli agtech firm Agmatix have launched a platform to drive international research into precision agriculture. The Consortium for Precision Crop Nutrition (CPCN) platform is also designed to expand open access to crop nutrient data to farmers, advisers and policy makers.

The new platform features two open, collaborative databases, and is the product of a partnership between the CPCN and several global research institutes. The platform employs agro informatics technology from Agmatix, with the aim of improving the efficiency and sustainability of agronomic practices.

The databases have produced rapid results already, including a published paper on estimating maize harvest index and nitrogen concentrations in grain and residue.

Developed in partnership with the International Fertilizer Association (IFA) and Wageningen University & Research (WUR), the first of the two databases looks at production and environmental factors affecting nutrient concentrations to determine the total amount of nutrients removed from the field in the harvested portion of the crop. This provides agronomists and farm advisors with the information needed to improve their plant nutrition plans, delivering key efficiencies and critical yield increases. Focused initially on nutritionally and industrially important crops, such as maize, wheat, rice and soybean, the Global Crop Nutrient Removal Database includes data on nutrient content, residues, crop yields and other associated data.

The second resource, The Nutrient Omission Trial Database, is focused on crop nutrient requirements. Created in collaboration with the IFA, the African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI), and Innovative Solutions for Decision Agriculture, this database includes data from researchers and institutes around the globe. It aims to support site-specific recommendations on optimising nutrient management by enabling researchers to compare crop nutrient requirements and plans.

“The information collected via this database will be invaluable in improving our understanding of ongoing trends in crop nutrient uptake and removal,” said Achim Dobermann, IFA Chief Scientist. “This will make it easier to create decision support systems to determine how to optimise crop production in a sustainable way, under changing environmental conditions, ultimately facilitating positive long-term changes in how these processes are managed across the industry.”

Both CPCN databases are supported by the Agmatix platform, designed to aggregate, standardise, and harmonise agronomic data. Agmatix has also used its algorithms to enhance the datasets with site-specific data, such as weather and geospatial information on soils and crops.

“Promoting open science is incredibly important to us. Only through collaboration can we progress the agricultural industry as fast as needed to meet the rising demand for food, which will always be at the core of what we do here at Agmatix,” said Ron Baruchi, CEO of Agmatix.

The wide-scale provision of research data, enabled through both Global Crop Nutrient Databases, aims to to advance scientific development of the sector, whilst also marking a positive step towards multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as reducing hunger and poverty in a sustainable manner. As well as being able to contribute data through the platform, researchers can use the datasets to perform meta-analyses, empowering deeper insights from their own data across different trial locations and fertiliser types.

“Being part of this project enables us to develop and disseminate evidence-based and sustainable crop nutrient management solutions in response to the changing climatic and weather conditions faced by farmers across Africa,” said Dr Pauline Chivenge, Principal Scientist, APNI & CPCN Coordinator.

Jamie Collinson, CTO, iSDA, said: “The data we’re able to collect via this platform is a critical to our digital advisor for smallholders, Virtual Agronomist. We are delighted to see the community coming together to create a shared resource which will elevate what’s possible across the whole ag-tech ecosystem.”