How AI and deeper roots can help store more carbon in the soil

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, global agricultural emissions in 2020 were 16 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (9% increase compared to 2000), and emissions from farms in 2020 accounted for almost all of the world’s agricultural emissions. accounted for half. United Nations (FAO).

In an article titled “Dig Deep: Analyzing Roots, Carbon, and Subsoil Carbon Dynamics,” molecular plants, lead author Angela Fernando (consultant at Bioversity International Alliance and CIAT) and her colleagues found that improving soil carbon can help farmers increase food production and achieve net-zero global carbon emissions. and describes it as a way to address climate impacts. change.

“The purpose of this article was to bring all the methods and ideas together in one place so that experts in the field can make the most of them,” she says.

Benefits of deeper roots

Fernando said deep-tillage (destroying the soil before planting) and shallow root decomposition allow soil carbon to re-enter the atmosphere, leading to deeper-rooted varieties and the mechanisms behind different crop varieties. It explains that understanding is necessary.

Fernando said that soil organic carbon is “like a cushion hidden in the soil” and that if roots can grow to about 2 meters high, they are much less susceptible to microbial decomposition and nutrients. and that it can function as a water storage. When there are drought conditions.

Most current crop and forage varieties spread their roots, but the discovery of the DRO1 gene, which controls root angle, has made it possible to develop crop and forage varieties that can root up to 1 meter deep.

“There’s no new biomass. The roots are just tilted, so they’re growing straight into the soil and aren’t being broken down there. That means the carbon in the soil stays locked up there. “I do,” Fernando said.

Joe Thome, director of the Alliance’s Americas hub, said the 2013 discovery of DRO1 was a “significant advance” in research to adapt food crops to water stress, as deeper roots can access groundwater sources. Stated.

carbon measurement

The researchers explain that one of the most difficult challenges in soil carbon sequestration remains the fundamental task of measuring carbon.

Michael Gomez Selvaraj, Digital Agriculture Scientist at the Alliance and co-author of the scientific paper, said samples are still taken individually as soil cores and tested in the lab, but with remote sensing and AI analysis. It is described as a combination of. We’re changing that.

“If you’re surveying 400 hectares, 40 samples won’t accurately represent soil carbon, and most people measuring carbon are only measuring at a depth of about 40 centimeters. ” says Gomez.

Gomez explained that improvements in carbon measurements through remote sensing and the application of AI analysis to that data will allow soil carbon to be measured quickly and accurately at the hectare scale.

“The accuracy of our laboratory and remote samples is very high, and we now have a great AI model for calculating soil carbon,” Gomez says. “We are applying this technology to scan large tracts of land for organic carbon, but in the future we hope to go even deeper, down to a meter underground.”

“We don’t want to destroy the soil,” Fernando added. “We want to use non-destructive remote sensing tools.”