Precision Planting’s New Platform: Radicle Agronomics

Today, Precision Planting branches out into a new discipline for the company in its agronomic portfolio of products: soil testing. 

In a project that took six years in development, Precision Planting introduces Radicle Agronomy. 

Todd Swanson, mechanical engineering team lead says, “we believe soil analysis is ready for a transformation.”

The development team was half engineers, and half agronomists. And the team traveled 10,000 miles, across 11 states and met with 30 crop consultants. 

Why is now the time for Precision Planting to branch out? 

As described by Doug Wright, the company aims to bring “farmer-first” products at the intersection of agronomic success, operational efficiency, and economic profit. 

And the team at Precision Planting says the area of nutrient management is ripe with opportunities. 
Dale Koch, senior engineering manager says one product that provided a springboard into nutrient management the Smart Firmer, which reports furrow attributes including OM, soil moisture, and crop residue to provide actionable insights. The limitation however was the Smart Firmer is not able to measure soil nutrients. 

He also shares earlier this year, the company diversified into its lineup of equipment for sprayers. 

Support of products is part of their culture at the company, and as an example, in the spring, their call center received 17,000 service calls in a 45-day window. 

What’s new in nutrient management? 

The team focused on where they could provide greater efficiency and remove opportunities for errors in the nutrient management cycle: soil sample, analysis, recommendation/crop analysis, and application. 
As such, Precision Planting is introducing a whole new vision and new platform in Radicle Agronomics. This is focused on professional crop consultants having access to better tools, more efficient processes, be less error prone, and better data. 

The first products of Radicle Agronomy: 

GeoPress: an ATV or UV mounted grinder and mixer that helps automate the in-field soil sample process. It grinds soil cores and with an automated 30 second mixing and loading step it secures the sample into the GeoTube containers. 

GeoTube: standardized sample containers outfitted with RFID tagging. These are automatically loaded and capped in the GeoPress system. They are built to be reusable and robust. On the RFID data, it includes identifier, device used during sampling, longitude and latitude, collection time, and notes. And these are fed into the Radicle Lab.

Radicle Lab: This is a fully automated soil lab. It requires 110 volt hookup, compressed air source, and a garden hose for water. GeoTubes can be loaded in any order—there is a priority lane–up to 400 at a time. One soil sample is processed in five minutes, and the GeoTube is cleaned and discharged. Inside the Radicle Lab, Microflow technology enables the precise chemistry with a serious of plastic plates, pumps and valves that process the soil sample through the analysis modules. Radicle Lab includes water filtration as well as rock filter. The machinery calculates the exact water to soil ratio needed to create the slurry that can be circulated through the analyses modules. There is a set of cartridges that needs to be replaced every 1,000 samples. The system can run 24 hours a day.

At launch, Radicle Lab can give results for pH, Buffer pH, potassium and phosphate. There is space in the Radicle Lab design to fit at least three more modules. 

Radicle Agronomy Software: Radicle Agronomics software suite connects all the steps in the nutrient management. It’s purpose built and compatible with mobile, tablet and desktop. And it automatically syncs with the cloud. Results are in Shape file format or CSV format, they include target collection points, actual collection points and can be batch exported. 

What’s so transformative? 

Radicle Lab ingests soil, uses small volumes, self-calibrates, and cleans itself. Its on-site analysis eliminates the steps of sorting and shipping soil samples. 

Specific to the software, Adam Vaccari says the goal of the software was to develop a tool that gives consultants more time in the field and flexibility to sample any field that is fit. Automatic cloud updates eliminates the need for data transfer. Fields are color coded based on work order. 

Additionally, Precision Planting says a lack of consistency in the soil sample lab protocols, results and recommendations means there’s room for a new entrant to bring new ideas. 

“This is a great peek behind the curtain,” Koch says. “This is a foundation for what we believe will transform nutrient management.” 

The team says it’s already looking at opportunities to test for magnesium, calcium, CEC and base saturation. 

There are a few systems that will be in use this fall in commercial consultant applications. Precision Planting says it’s planning on introducing the product with a lease model for the Radicle Lab, and then purchases of GeoPress, GeoTubes and the cartridges/consumable parts. 

Click here to see a timeline of the past 10 years in Precision Planting's history.