Electrochemical framework for dynamic tracking of Soil Organic Matter

Soil Health parameters serve as excellent surrogate measures towards assessing environmental quality and understanding effects of climate change mitigation via carbon sequestration. Soil Organic Matter (SOM) is a parameter that is synonymous to soil health and understanding SOM is a key metric to building and influencing good soil and agronomic practices by impacting soil aggregation and water withholding capacity. It is a vital regulator of soil nutrient cycling and uptake as well as a factor in the global carbon cycle and is hence more advantageous than just carbon monitoring. While it is understood that soil health cannot be analyzed directly, the use of an efficient indicator that can relay information about the soil physico-chemical and biological characteristics is highly desirable since it offers the ability to analyze soil information over time and build patterns in terms of geographical location.

The proposed sensing system offers an in-situ electroanalytical approach to survey various electroactive substances present in the soil matrix. Utilizing this experimental framework- A mechanism of interaction between the RTIL (Room Temperature Ionic-Liquid) modified electrode and the OM functional moieties based on hydrogen bonding and pi-pi interactions captured using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy method is utilized to build a first-of-a-kind electrochemical SOM sensor.