Researchers at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, have built a virtual-reality training platform to teach farmers and field technicians around the world to use a low-cost soil test the same team developed earlier, a step meant to make precision agriculture practical where hands-on training is hard to deliver.

The device, Agrilo, was introduced in 2025. It is a colorimetric test: a farmer mixes a small soil sample with a pre-filled solution, applies droplets to a paper or vinyl sensor strip and photographs it with a smartphone, and an app reads the colour pattern to report nitrate, phosphate, potassium, pH, sulphur, magnesium, manganese, calcium, boron, iron, organic matter and cation exchange capacity. Each sensor costs about $10 and results come back in minutes, against days and often hundreds of dollars for a commercial laboratory. The developers say its readings have been validated against conventional laboratory results.

The new work tackles a different problem: getting large numbers of farmers and extension staff to follow the seven-step protocol correctly and consistently across regions with different languages, literacy levels and farming conditions. Agrilo VR runs on Meta Quest headsets and walks trainees through soil preparation, reagent mixing, timing and colour reading in a simulation of how the liquids and colour changes look on a real bench. With users' consent it logs where trainees pause, repeat steps or ask for help, so the team can see which parts of the protocol cause confusion and refine the instructions.

The project is led by Mohammed Elmorsy, an associate professor of computer science, and Samuel Mugo, a professor of chemistry, both at MacEwan and co-founders of PimaSens Inc, the university spin-off commercialising Agrilo, a financial interest they have disclosed. Abel Mendez Porras of the Tecnológico de Costa Rica's San Carlos campus is testing the platform outside Canada. Funding came from Mitacs Global Link, the Riipen work-integrated learning platform and Alberta Innovates Summer Research Studentships.

Rather than a single pilot, the team tested Agrilo VR in four very different places: Medicine Hat in Alberta, KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, San Carlos in Costa Rica and Nairobi in Kenya, to check whether one module works for users with different languages, education and access to internet or hardware. One researcher noted the same training can now be delivered in several countries at once without anyone travelling to run workshops.

No accuracy or completion-rate statistics from the VR trial were published with the announcement, so it should be read as a report on a new training tool and its early multi-country deployment rather than a controlled study. The Agrilo device's nutrient readings, by contrast, were checked against laboratory results in the team's earlier published work.

Photo: The U.S. Army / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Source: Global Agriculture