Rapid on-farm assessment of soil nitrate in corn
Abstract
This project identifies farmer-friendly methods for soil nitrate (NO₃‾) testing and evaluates whether low-cost colorimetric kits can serve as a rapid tool for monitoring soil water quality in corn.
Funding Agency
Mississippi Corn Promotion Board
Methods
Across field campaigns at Brooksville, three soil-water sampling techniques — suction-cup lysimeters, drainage catch basins, and soil-slurry filtrate — are compared for effort and cost, and colorimetric strips and cadmium-reduction kits are benchmarked against laboratory LC-MS, with strip color read by handheld colorimeter and ImageJ to build calibration curves.