Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are working on a new and simple method of determining the nutritional condition of cereal plants with the help of easy-to-use biosensor test strips, much like blood sugar testing for diabetics. Multiple plant stems are collected from at least three different locations in the field and used for extraction. One drop of the sap on a test strip is enough to measure the nitrate content with a diagnostic device that fits in the palm of your hand. The result is available in a few minutes. It is used to calibrate remote sensing data which is already available via satellite from the EU Copernicus program, the European land monitoring service. The combination of precise local measurements from the new diagnostic device using test strips and widely available earth observation data based on satellites allows for exact calculation of the amount of nitrogen fertilizer required in the field examined. By the TUM researchers' estimation, this saves up to 20 percent of the fertilizer required for the cultivation of cereals.
