Agriculture LIMS: how to automate soil testing lab workflows
Soil testing laboratories are a crucial aspect of our agricultural and environmental processes. They are often overlooked by LIMS providers due to the industry’s smaller size and more unique demands with their laboratory information management systems.
AIS has operated in this sector for over 35 years, and we continue to prioritise soil testing labs and the wider environmental and agricultural sectors when we develop our LIMS. Not only do we understand the workflows in a soil testing laboratory, but we also recognise the expectations inflicted on these laboratories.
In this article, we will delve into the importance of soil testing laboratories and the priority functions they require from a LIMS to efficiently manage their operations and sample data.
The soil testing laboratory
Soil testing is performed by various types of organisations across a number of different sectors, whether required by farming, construction, land development or medicine. Soil testing is likely to be incorporated in some format.
Undoubtedly, soil plays a pivotal role in the agricultural sector, as its nutritional profile and quality directly influences the growth rate of crops and consequently, production costs. If the soil’s nutritional content is known, growth rate, yield and throughput can be optimised as the soil can be treated respectively to improve its profile for growth.
This is just one example of the crucial role soil plays in wider processes. In 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself.” At the time, the 32nd US President was making his case for effective soil management to state governors. However, nearly a century later, soil management and analysis continue to be as important as ever for the nourishment of the agricultural and environmental sectors globally.
The purpose of the soil testing laboratory
The soil testing lab has evolved to advanced heights since 1937, with a typical 21st century soil testing lab encompassing a range of tests and workflows. These include particle size analysis, mechanical analysis, chemical analysis, moisture content, microbiological analysis, Toxicological analysis, pH, and more.
The equipment used has also broadened, with analytical instruments ranging from spectrophotometry, chromatography, atomic absorption and many others typically found in the lab. These soil testing labs must now navigate quality standards, regulatory compliance and efficiency in order to effectively manage and process the rise in samples coming from the field to the lab.
The evolution of these laboratories has seen regulatory bodies begin to govern various different testing methods, with the chemical testing of soil being related to MCERTS performance standards, an ISO accreditation and UKAS requirements in particular.
What has emerged is the expectation for a well-run laboratory to run quality control samples to further validate results, highlighting the accuracy of the assays and offering insights for opportunities to optimise workflows.
As laboratory lead time and turnaround times become more stringent, soil testing labs are also expected to produce results in typically 2 –3 business days for general/standard soil analysis covering pH, lime, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and more.
To meet these deadlines without compromising compliance or testing quality, many environmental labs and agricultural laboratories have turned to automating their processes, improving their efficiency and integrating their platforms. Soil analysis is one such aspect of these laboratories which has become more advanced and data-intensive, as such, agriculture LIMS was born.
Agriculture LIMS introduced to soil testing labs
Over the last few decades, it has become paramount that the analytical laboratory you choose to test soil samples is compliant and efficient. This is where a proficient Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) can offer assistance.
Due to the nature of the assays and workflows that exist in a soil testing lab, manual methods of recording data naturally become more labour-intensive as the workload grows. It’s not uncommon for many UKAS laboratories to rely on manual data collection and recording methods, such as spreadsheets and paper. This is because the landscape and demand of these types of labs still remain relatively low in comparison to pharmaceutical and GMP laboratories.
This is also precisely why a LIMS provider delivering solutions and packages to larger-scale labs don’t recognise or understand the unique requirements of agricultural LIMS. A pharmaceutical lab's requirement for LIMS typically stems from scalability, traceability and usability for auditable compliance.
Agriculture LIMS on the other hand is motivated by the individual lab’s needs to remain compliant and meet growing turnaround demands, which transcends down to effective sample tracking, data management as well as workflow management and integration.
For a soil testing laboratory to operate optimally, they must adapt and implement a LIMS, embedding automation to give themselves a chance to optimise procedures and subsequently smooth the soil analysis workflow.
How to automate the soil testing lab
Automating aspects of day-to-day operations, such as sample collection, data collection, results evaluation and report creation, contributes to maintaining a good turnaround. This allows a lab to handle more samples, and henceforth more clients, without compromising documentation management.
A LIMS will help to relieve the pain points of meeting regulatory standards and assists with various operations in the lab. This includes managing instrument calibration and preventative maintenance data, staff training, storage documents, audit trails, controlling QA/QC processes, and managing inventory.
AIS’ LIMS offers additional features, including a customer interface, allowing the labs to access their LIMS data and reports via the web in real-time from the comfort of their own laptop or phone. Our LabPortal also aids in streamlining your workflows ahead of time, as clients can pre-register samples, providing the laboratories with clear instructions and ensuring only work registered via LabPortal is carried out. This helps efficiently distribute and manage crucial resources in the laboratory.
We understand that a common challenge that soil testing labs face is meeting various regulatory and quality standards. While compliance is essential, it can be a challenge to reach. However, by integrating a LIMS, the testing process can be tracked end-to-end. This enables effective management of the influx of soil samples, tracking receipt of the sample right through to analysis and storage.
Opting for a LIMS which integrates with your existing instruments will also allow for real-time data imports and exports, eliminating the need for manual data entry or shortcuts like ctrl X and ctrl C from the instrument to the LIMS!
Allow your lab personnel to allocate their time and energy to the testing and analysis of their soil samples. Automate your soil testing lab using a highly configurable, modular agriculture LIMS provider! Looking for a demo of our agriculture LIMS? Get in touch with AIS at marketing@ais-lims.com.
Posted by Beth Taylor on 16-Apr-2024)