Senior government officials said the union government is preparing to upgrade the soil testing process by empowering farmers with handheld digital tools that can deliver results in real time using satellite technology.
With this device, farmers will be able to quickly evaluate soil properties such as texture, organics, pH and nutrient levels with handheld devices in seconds, allowing precise farming.
Jat also serves as Director General of the Indian Council on Agricultural Research (ICAR), with this information eases that farmers can apply the right amount of fertilizer, nutrition and irrigation according to specific soil needs, thereby reducing input costs and increasing crop yields.
Besides that, unlike soil health cards that offer static and technical reports, Jat said, the new National Soil Survey Laboratory will also provide farmers with real-time and easy-to-understand soil data, which they will get personalized advice through mobile apps or handheld devices.
These soil-related reforms are expected to overhaul agricultural practices in India, thus greatly increasing farmers’ yields. While traditional soil testing methods take several days and require a lot of resources, routine chemical analysis in soil testing laboratories is expensive, labor-intensive, and time-consuming.
Agriculture contributes about 18% to India’s GDP, accounting for 42% of the country’s labor force.
In the 2025-26 union budget, the Ministry of Agriculture and Allied Activities received the allocation ₹1.71 trillion ₹FY25 was $1.40 trillion, an increase of more than 20% signal that the coalition government is focused on improving agricultural practices in India.
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When agricultural reform is digital
Powering handheld devices will be the development of a large library of soil spectrals, which will allow for the development of sensor-based soil fertility assessments. This will allow farmers to treat different parts of their field based on specific soil conditions.
Similarly, the national storage of standard soil spectral data collected from all over the country will make soil data easier to access and interpret through user-friendly applications, and even through user-friendly applications.
A senior scientist related to the ICAR-National Superiau to of ICAR-National Superiau to of ICAR-National Sublice and Land usage program said that the “National Storage” currently “contains spectra of more than 40,000 different soil types collected from all over India… Once fully developed, soil properties will be in units of one second.”
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Another ICAR scientist said that 5,000-10,000 samples will be added each year.
“Once we have a sufficient number of soil samples covering most of the changes in the soil, we can develop the relationship between soil properties and spectrum using a variety of modeling algorithms, including machine learning and deep learning techniques,” the scientist said.
These models can be used to predict the properties of new soil samples, thereby reducing dependence on physical laboratories that analyze soil properties. This will allow every farmer to generate a soil health card, the scientist added.
According to government data, a total of 247.4 million soil health cards have been produced since February 2015, as part of a plan to provide farmers with detailed information on their soil nutritional status.
The government has established 8,272 soil testing laboratories and released ₹17,061,800 million states and trade union territories support the Soil Health Card Program. In 2024-25, approximately 9.2 million soil samples will be sent for testing under the program’s approximately 6.5 million samples.
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