One of IIT Kanpur’s path-breaking inventions, Bhu-Parikshak rapid soil-testing device that came out last year has been launched as a product in the market. The device developed by a team led by Prof. Jayant Kumar Singh from the Department of Chemical Engineering, and consisting. Pallav Prince, Ashar Ahmad, Yashasvi Khemani and Mohd. Aamir Khan, is licensed to an agritech company, AgroNxt Services.
This first-of-its-kind novel device is capable of detecting soil health in just 90 seconds through an embedded mobile application. It would assist individual farmers in obtaining soil health parameters of agricultural fields with recommended dose of fertilizers without having to go to a laboratory. The device is based on Near Infrared Spectroscopy technology that provides real-time soil analysis reports on smartphones with an embedded mobile application named Bhu-Parikshak available on Google Play Store.
With a short span of time, the product has now been made ready for use by general public, and has been launched in the market at a launch event on 26th May, 2022 at the auditorium of IIT Kanpur’s Start-up Innovation and Incubation Centre (SIIC) in Noida.
Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Director IIT Kanpur, said, “Our primary objective with the Bhu-Parikshak device is to offer our farmers relief in terms of testing the health of their soil. This is a task that is usually very tedious for them as they have to rely on laboratories far away from home. We’re proud to share that now that the device is launched as a product, it’ll be a great boon for our farmers in lessening the hassle of testing their soil. I congratulate again the team led by Prof. Jayant Kumar Singh and the AgroNxt team for making the device ready for the market in a short period of time.”
Prof. Ankush Sharma, Co-PIC, SIIC IIT Kanpur, termed the soil testing device a game-changer in the market, as the existing solutions for soil testing are manual and time-consuming, whereas the current product provides real-time information about the soil health in just 90 seconds. To enhance the availability of Bhu-Parikshak to wider markets, AgroNxt signed MOU with Nova Agritech Limited and Nutrikosh India Private Limited.
