40 Years of Soil Testing
Soil testing holds a special place at Hill Labs. Forty years ago, Roger and Anne Hill started their business by providing soil and leaf testing to customers in agriculture and horticulture. The methods have evolved over the years as improvements have been made, but the fundamentals remain the same.
As sample numbers grew, so too did the desire to innovate the process. The operation of processing a soil sample from reception through to analysis is quite manual. This was the driver for the birth of RoSEE (Robotic Soil Extraction Equipment) in 2002. RoSEE was impressive, initially carrying out automated testing for pH, phosphorus, cations and sulphur and processing about 350 samples a day. Videos of RoSEE show a robotic arm picking up dried and ground samples and transferring the right amount of soil into glass beakers. Not unlike groceries on the conveyer belt at the supermarket, these beakers made their way along a purpose built platform, having the right amount of reagents added at the right time, complete with stirring, filtering and finally washing up. Staff recall the alarms going off followed by the sound of smashing glass when there was a timing hiccup occasionally and people flew to stop the belt and save the beakers!
RoSEE served Hill Labs well and was decommissioned due to sample numbers outgrowing her capacity. The most valuable part of RoSEE was where the tapping out of soils and automatic creation of worksheets on the fly happened. This was robust and it was decided it would be retained, with additional modifications that more than doubled the daily capacity. RoSEE’s successor, ASTRo (Automated Soil Tapping Robot) was welcomed into the fold in 2010, and still ‘taps’ about 800 soil samples a day, with subsequent extractions and filtrations now being done manually. ASTRo guarantees accuracy and automates a very repetitive job. Recently, NIR (near infra-red) testing was added to ASTRo, which provides a rapid and non-destructive evaluation of the chemistry related to soil organic matter. The rapid nature of this technology means customers have results earlier when compared to wet chemistry methods.
It is always special to listen to Roger speak about the people who have been involved in soil testing developments over the years, from the external soil scientists who developed new and innovative soil tests, to the many brainstorming sessions in-house, making our efficient operations what they are today. Special mention to Roger Hill, Tony Kay and Fred van den Bosch for their contributions to the magnificent piece of machinery RoSEE was. To Melanie Steel, Stephen Haylett-Petty and Sukhjeet Singh for the efficient ‘beast’ ASTRo remains to be, and to Kyle Devey for his contributions to NIR at Hill Labs.
