An innovative ‘Toolbox’, aimed to help farmers achieve a good balance between crop productivity, soil health and soil carbon storage, has been developed as a result of a major EU research project called SmartSOIL.

Every arable farmer knows that soil organic matter is at the heart of profitable crop production. It helps improve the workability of soils, store water and increase nutrient supply. As leading soil scientist Professor Pete Smith from Aberdeen University says “Good management of soil organic matter is essential for producing high quality crops at yields that deliver good economic returns”.

Researchers from the south coast of England have established a small network ofmonitoring instruments in Christchurch Harbour and associated rivers to study the effects of weather events on water quality, and to better understand the magnitude and spatial/temporal variation of macronutrient fluxes - nitrogen (N), carbon (C) and phosphorus (P).

The project, which is financed by a Natural Environmental Research Councilgrant, has involved the installation of three continuous monitoring stations; one in the harbour itself, a second in the river Avon and a third in the river Stour.

Quantitech, the Milton Keynes based environmental instrumentation specialist, has reported a surge in demand for its rentable emissions analysers. The company’s Dominic Duggan says: “This is undoubtedly for two reasons; first and foremost, the two main analysers are MCERTS approved and secondly, they are both transportable and simple to carry from one site to the next.”

Traditional methods for measuring airborne particulate matter measure particle mass per unit air volume, usually with an upper size limit of x microns (PMx etc.). However, from a human health perspective, the particles of most interest are those that penetrate deep into the lungs. For this reason, Air Monitors has launched the Naneos Partector nanoparticle detector in the UK.