Digital Soil Health Card App: A Geo-Smart Solution for Site-Specific Management of Soil Fertility Toward Sustainable Agricultural Health in India

Proper guidance regarding site-specific crop planning based on soil health information is crucial for achieving sustainable agriculture goal through precision farming. Present study aims to develop a GIS-based digital Soil Health Card app as a decision-support tool that would cater the need of generating Soil Health Card under National Mission on Soil Health Card in developing country like India with user choice based crop selection from basket of suitable crops with inbuilt fertilizer recommendation for the end users be it off-site or on-site. Geo-referenced surface soil samples (0–15 cm depth) from 325 m grid interval were collected and analyzed for twelve fertility parameters based on standard procedure. The geo-database were subjected to Kriging for generating soil fertility maps. Geotagging of cadastral database were carried out using object-based segmentation method considering modal values of soil properties. Soil-site-based crop suitability was worked out in GIS using attribute query tool. The SHC is an android-based GIS app developed with the help of android studio and open-source geo-server as server platform. Inbuilt fertilizer calculator was developed for recommending crop-specific fertilizer requirements based on native fertility. A successful test case of Goa state is also presented to evaluate the performance efficiency and mass acceptability of the app among field level users. The key novelties of the app, which makes it popular among its end users, are its geospatial nature; user choice based crop selection and balanced fertilizer recommendation based on inbuilt fertilizer calculator module.