STTR Phase I: Software tools for sustainable nutrient management on specialty crop farms

This Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) Phase I project will determine whether a mass balance approach can be used to evaluate inputs and outputs in complex agronomic systems and whether this soil nutrient management model can be delivered via an online software platform to help farmers improve the sustainability of their soil nutrient management practices. The use of mass balance approaches is common in other complex systems but infrequently used in agronomic systems because of the dominance of soil testing as a means to evaluate plant-available nutrient content. These tests are poorly suited to complex production systems or those that use biologically derived nutrient sources, such as animal manures. Thus they are not an effective means of evaluating nutrient management strategies in organic or intensive vegetable systems ? both of which are growing sectors of US agriculture. This project will increase knowledge about the factors that drive the major nutrient flows in these systems, leading to the development of a soil nutrient management decision support tool that will enable farmers to respond to this information and effect change in their soil management practices. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is a decrease in the over-application of animal-based soil amendments through the adoption of a mass balance approach to soil nutrient management. This approach can be used to increase the sustainability of intensive crop production practices by reducing the accumulation of nutrients which increase weed competition, crop susceptibility to pests and pathogens, and nutrient losses that contaminate water supplies, damage natural aquatic ecosystems, and increase greenhouse gases. This project will greatly improve an existing mass balance model of soil nutrient content and research and prototype a nutrient budgeting software tool that will guide vegetable and specialty crop farmers toward adopting more sustainable soil management practices while increasing the profitability of their farm businesses. Because of the financial incentive to adopt this technology, the end result of this project will be a highly commercializable online software tool that will interact with an existing farm planning, management and record keeping software platform that is already in use by more than 5000 farmers across the U.S. The nutrient management tool to be developed will impact the technology, agricultural, and environmental monitoring and management sectors and benefit the more than 250,000 US specialty crop producers.