Depth & Nutrient Stratification

One of the challenges with getting an accurate soil sample every single time is extracting the full core at the right depth. This matters because nutrients are stratified in the soil profile – we have a lot more at the top than at the bottom. If you ask any leading soil laboratory, they’ll say being an inch off here at the bottom can lead to 10-20% difference in your nutrient results.

Depth Challenges with Hand Probes

We can all imagine why depth is a challenge with hand probes. Even in normal soil conditions, pushing the probe into the ground can be difficult, and you also have the angle effect that can mess up your depth. But also you can have very hard ground, you can also have very wet ground, and those can sneak up on you and surprise you as you’re pushing the probe into the ground.

Problems with Frame Mounted Systems Solutions

Some solutions in the industry use a frame mounted control system, and you can set the depth for those. The issue becomes adapting to different hardness of ground and different terrain, which cause that suspension to travel up different amounts and the resulting depth to be significantly off.

ROGO’s Solution: True Depth

So these were problems we needed to solve. At ROGO how we solve these is by breaking this problem into two parts.

One, we drop our arm all the way to the ground, making firm contact, and then we push our probe from there – measuring from that ground plane.

Two, we use advanced control algorithms to stop within an eighth of an inch of the depth target every single time. We can do this even though we’re moving quite quickly into the ground.

No matter what happens on the suspension, or if the machine rocks to and fro, it doesn’t matter.

That’s how ROGO has improved our industry’s ability to get the right depth soil core every single time.