For many decades soil analysis has been used as an aid to assess the soil fertility and plan crop nutrient management. Soil sampling and analysis is the most cost effective tool to balance the soil fertility and allocate soil amendments to maximize yields. Laboratory investigations on a sample of soil can provide information on the availability of plant nutrients from the soil and guide external inputs to meet targeted crop yields. Fertilizer application based on the soil analysis helps in achieving the sustainable yields, economizes the cultivation and ensures environmental safety. So far the soil testing laboratories employed the paper based technology to record, process and deliver the soil based fertilizer management advisories to the coffee growers. There is a high need of development of and ICT enabled, locations specific Fertiliser recommendation and Decision Support System for helping the farming community. Hence Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI) in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management -Kerala (IIITM-K) has developed a Soil Nutrient Management Information System for Coffee.

Fertilizer Recommendation & Nutrient Management is one of the key outputs of this system. Soil samples were analysed in the laboratories of RRII and NBSS & LUP. The basic parameters utilized for generating the fertilizer recommendation and nutrient advisory are soil pH value, electrical conductivity, organic carbon content as a measure of available nitrogen, available major nutrients (phosphorous, potassium), secondary nutrients(calcium, magnesium, Sulphur) and available micronutrients (iron, manganese, copper, zinc, and boron). In addition, details about the land use/cropping system and the methods used for analysis are also considered for data interpretation and development of recommendations

The system has been designed to generate crop specific fertilizer recommendation and advisory for coffee and intercrops (pepper and orange) that are popularly grown in traditional coffee-growing areas of South India.

Soil Health Card for Growers

Based on the soil analysis data provided by the soil testing laboratory and also based on the choice of intercrop among pepper and orange, the system automatically generates fertilizer recommendation for coffee and selected intercrop. By using the state of the art software engineering and computational techniques, the system generate the fertilizer recommendation and advisory for the growers. The advisories are generated in the form of a Soil Health Cards (SHC). The Soil Health Cards can be generated in any four local language of the Choice (English, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam) and available for print format (Portable Document Format)

The soil samples were collected from individual locations of Coffee growing area and the location coordinates of sites of soil samples were recorded by GPS. Soil samples were analysed following standard analytical protocols and nutrient content in the fine earth fraction was mapped with geostatistical techniques, deriving a surface using the values from the measured locations to predict values for each location in the landscape by Kriging interpolation technique.

Web enabled fertilizer recommendation was developed based on interpolated soil fertility data in collaboration with Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management - Kerala (IIITM-K) overlaying different soil fertility parameters and soil depth following the guidelines of discriminatory fertilizer recommendation.

Based on the soil analysis data provided by the soil testing laboratory and also based on the choice of intercrop among pepper and orange, the system automatically generates fertilizer recommendation for coffee and selected intercrop. By using the state of the art software engineering and computational techniques, the system generate the fertilizer recommendation and advisory for the growers. The advisories are generated in the form of a Soil Health Cards (SHC). The Soil Health Cards can be generated in any four local language of the Choice (English, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam) and available for available for print format (Portable Document Format)