Real-time Estimation of Nitrogen, Phosphorus,

and Potassium in Soil

Vinith Reddykapa Alumuru Jayavardhan Harshith Panguluru
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Ropar Indian Institute of Technology Ropar Indian Institute of Technology Ropar
Punjab, India Punjab, India Punjab, India
vinithkr100@gmail.com jayavardhanram@gmail.com harshiith.p@gmail.com

Manik Garg Gaurav Gill Satyam Agarwal

Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Ropar Indian Institute of Technology Ropar Indian Institute of Technology Ropar
Punjab, India Punjab, India Punjab, India
gargmanik98@gmail.com gill.gaurav095@gmail.com satyam6099@gmail.com

Nishant Gupta
Department of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Ropar
Punjab, India
2022 IEEE Delhi Section Conference (DELCON) | 978-1-6654-5883-2/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/DELCON54057.2022.9753548

nishantgupta.nic@gmail.com

Abstract—Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), and Potassium (K)
are considered the most important nutrients and are essential
components in the soil affecting the growth and yield of
crops. For optimal growth of the plant, the nutrients N, P,
and K present in the soil must be in a balanced proportion.
However, based on the parent material (like sand, peat, and
clay), climatic conditions, and the differences in the past
management of the crop residues and the use of fertilizers,
the farmers need to know the accurate proportions of N, P,
and K to maximize the crop growth, production, and yield.
Therefore, its measurement to maintain an accurate balance
is crucial. In this paper, two methods to estimate N, P, and
K in the soil are proposed which can provide results in real-
time without the need for any chemicals. The first method
makes use of electrical conductivity and pH sensors to measure
these parameters from the soil and uses machine learning
techniques to estimate the N, P, and K values. The second
method makes use of optical sensors to measure the amount
of light absorbed and reflected by the soil and uses regression
techniques to estimate N, P, and K. In both cases, the N, P,
and K values are classified into different classes. We obtain
more than 75% accuracy in both cases. A hand-held electronic
device to measure N, P and K can be easily designed using
these techniques. The proposed schemes can optimize fertilizer
usage as well as assist farmers in an economical and efficient
crop yield.
Index Terms—NPK status, soil quality, smart farming,
machine learning, optical sensing
I. I NTRODUCTION
The agriculture sector is the most significant and crucial
sector in the world. People in major parts of the globe
are still using traditional farming and crop management
techniques, which are not very efficient in current envi-
ronmental conditions, such as a sudden change in climate,
erratic irrigation, soil degradation, etc. As a result, there is
a decline in crop yield and quality. To address this issue,
an adaptive soil and crop management system is necessary.
978-1-6654-5883-2/22/$31..00 © 2022 IEEE
A fertile and rich soil results in better crop quality as
well as higher yield. There are various soil components that
play a vital role in better production, such as soil moisture,
electrical conductivity, presence of elements such as nitro-
gen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), magnesium, iron,
etc. [1]. The macronutrients in soil are very important for
crop quality and yield and therefore needed to be estimated.
According to that, farmers need to plan to fertilize the field
to get a good yield. Adequate fertilizer can impact good
quality crop and yield, so that the world’s increasing food
demands are met.
In this paper, we focus on three main nutrients present
in the soil, namely, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and
potassium (K). These three nutrients increase the growth of
the plant in different ways; N promotes the growth of leaves
and vegetation, P promotes root and overall plant growth,
and K promotes flowering, fruiting, and keeps regulation of
nutrients and water in the plant cells. Over the shelf low-
cost sensors are available to measure some of the mineral
contents in the soil. However, for elements like N, P and K,
chemical tests are available commercially which essentially
use mixing of certain chemicals to measure the N, P and K
presence in soil. To measure N, P and K content in different
soils, complex setups involving different set of chemicals
are required which adds to measurement complexity, time,
and it also requires an expert to carry out the measurements
in a chemical laboratory.
In this regard, this work presents two methods to measure
the N, P and K content in the soil. These methods can be
implemented as an electronic device and do not require any
use of chemicals or an expert person to operate. Further, un-
like in the chemical techniques, multiple soil measurements
can be made without any additional requirements.

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A L IST OF VARIOUS P RODUCTS D EVELOPED TO M EASURE D IFFERENT N UTRIENTS C ONTENT OF THE S OIL
Product Producer/supplier
LaMotte AST-5 LaMotte
Kasetsart University and
Kasetsart (N-P-K)
Boon Din Thai Co.
Columbia Univ./ Univ.
SoilDoc
of Maryland
Botanico Soil Test Kit Amazon UK
Mobile Lab SoilCares
Botanico Soil Test Kit Amazon UK
Prerana Soil Testing Kit PRERANA Laboratories
Soil Testing Kit Innovative Instruments, India Colorimetry
Laqua Twin Nutrient Meters Spectrum Technology
A. Related Works
At present, electrochemical, colorimetry, chemical meth-
ods, fluorescence spectroscopy, and infrared spectroscopy
are the techniques that are well-known and are widely used
to develop macronutrient estimation. We present a list of
such products in Table I, where we have mentioned different
products developed by the companies and the methods used
by them [2]. However, the majority of these methods are
either expensive, require elaborate setups, or are not suited
for measurements. The details and drawbacks about the
different methods is presented below:
• The colorimetry method uses chemicals. Also, to get
accurate results, this method needs an expert person to
work in a chemical laboratory [3], [4].
• Electrochemical methods also makes use of chemicals
in a laboratory setup [5].
• Spectroscopy method estimates the concentration of
N, P, and K values in soil using NIR (near-infrared)
and MIR (mid-infrared) spectroscopy. This method is
complex to implement [6], [7].
The authors in [8] studied the soil NPK estimation using
an Arduino UNO and light emitting device based on visible
infrared spectroscopy. To quantify the nutrients present in
the soil, authors used rate of light absorption and intensity
of absorbed radiation values. In [9], the authors developed a
modular direct ultra-violet visible spectroscopy-based sens-
ing system to investigate the solution of NPK containing
fertilizers. However, the disadvantage lies in the interference
of competing ions in the spectra. The authors in [10]
reported a technique-based support-vector machine used to
determine plants’ nutrient status. They analyzed images of
plant leaves to predict the deficiency of potassium in plants.
In [11], lab-based device that used a hyperspectral imaging
system to detect N content in the soil was developed. It uses
a conjunction of chemometrics and hyperspectral imaging
technology.
B. Novelty, Scope and Contributions
It is well aware that substantial research has been done
in estimating N, P, or K in soil. However, the spectroscopic
methods are bulky and expensive. In contrast, colorimetry
does not support site-specific calibration. Therefore, there
is still a need to develop a technique that provides low
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TABLE I
Method Nutrient detected
Colorimetry NO3 -,N, P, K, Ca, Mg and Cl, Cu
Colorimetry N, P, K
Electrode Sensor Meters for different nutrients,
N, phosphate, K, P, sulfate-S
Colorimetry + Android App system
Colorimetry N, P, K
X-ray, fluorescence, (mid) infrared spectroscopy. N,P,K, Ca,Mg
Colorimetry NO3 -, N, NH4 +-N, P, K, Ca, Mg
Colorimetry N, P, K
N, P, K
NO3 -N,
Meter with sensor
Ca, K, Na
computation time, is effective in many applications such
as site-specific calibration, and does not require chemicals.
Towards this end, this paper presents an effective methods
to measure the N, P and K content in the soil using
electronic sensors and transducers. These methods provide
less computational time, and do not require use of chemical.
Furthermore, multiple measurements can be made without
any additional requirements. These methods can be em-
ployed to built a hand-held electronic device, which can
provide N, P and K estimates without the expert operation
and the measurements can be obtained in real-time.
The key contributions of this work are as follows.
• We use two machine learning algorithms, namely linear
regression and neural networks, to estimate the N, P,
and K values by measuring some of the characteristics
in the soil, such as electrical conductivity (EC) and
pH [12], [13]. The EC and pH can be measured easily
using various electronic sensors.
• Moreover, we also present a optical sensing method,
wherein different color lights are incident on the soil
and the N, P and K content is estimated from the
absorbed and reflected light intensities in the soil.
• Results shows that the neural networks provide better
estimation as compared to linear regression but with
an expense of increases computational complexity.
Optical sensing methods is also shown as an effective
approach to estimate N, P, and K.
• Overall, we obtain more than 75 % accuracy in ma-
chine learning methods and optical sensing methods.
We anticipate that this work will help the farmers manage
their crops in a much better way. Specifically, questions like
when to fertilize the field, what fertilizers to use, etc., can
be addressed using the N, P, and K measurements. This will
take forward the idea of smart farming and pave way for
future developments in this domain.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the
ML based technique, while Section III presents the optical
sensing based method for N, P and K estimation. Section
IV concludes the paper.
II. P ROPOSED ML T ECHNIQUES TO E STIMATE N, P, K
We consider two basic soil parameters namely pH and
Electrical Conductivity (EC). pH stands for the potential of
hydrogen. It is the measure of acidity or basicity of soil.
 TABLE II TABLE III
N, P AND K C LASSIFICATION INTO T HREE C ATEGORIES , VIZ . L OW, M ACHINE L EARNING M ODELS USED TO E STIMATE N, P AND K
M EDIUM AND H IGH VALUES FROM S OIL P H AND EC M EASUREMENTS
Range N (in mg/kg) P (in mg/kg) K (in mg/kg) Model Inputs Description
Low 0-165 0-10 0-100 Linear Regression pH and EC Linear Regression is used.
Medium 165-270 10-45 100-200 Hidden Layers = 9, 40 Nodes in
Neural Networks pH and EC
High > 270 > 45 > 200 each layer, and 40 epochs.

EC of the soil is the ability of the soil to conduct electricity

through it. It is a measure of the number of salts or ions
present in the soil.
The above parameters correlate very well with several
physical and chemical properties of soil, like nutrient hold-
ing capacity, crop yield, etc. Determining pH and EC in
the soil can be easily carried out using sensors. EC can be
measured by using HM Digital AP-2 sensor, while pH can
be measured using pH meter from D.B. Technologies.
We make use of an online dataset from Kaggle. The
Kaggle dataset is available online and can be accessed at
Fig. 1. Nitrogen content (mg/Kg) in the soil: actual versus estimated using
https://www.kaggle.com/surabhiremix. This linear regression. (blue *: actual; red +: predicted)
dataset has 62576 rows of data. In this dataset, 19 attributes
of the soil are provided, such as magnisium, zinc, organic respectively. The units of N, P, and K in fig 1, fig 2, fig 3 are
carbon, pH, N, P, K, etc. The attributes we are interested in mg/kg. We observe from the figures that the estimated
in are N, P, K, EC, and pH [14]. EC and pH attributes are N, P, and K values occupy a small range. Clearly, linear
used to estimate the N, P, and K values. regression is not able to estimate the N, P, and K values
In our current work, we do not estimate the absolute accurately.
content of N, P and K in the soil as it gives high estimation From the estimated values, the N, P and K are divided
error. Rather, we classify the N, P, and K values in three into categories as per Table II. The accuracy resulting from
different categories namely low, medium and high. Table II this classification is 60.73% for N, 51.54% for P, and
presents the classification of N, P, and K in the soil under 51.09% for K. It is observed that linear regression intro-
various categories. duces huge error in element classification and is therefore
To classify the N, P, and K content in the soil under not a suitable method for N, P and K classification. Next,
the three categories, we present two ML technique. We we present a neural network based estimation model for N,
make use of the regression technique to first estimate P and K.
the N, P and K values and then classify them into the
three categories (low, medium and high). Note that the
classification methods give poor results than the regression
methods due to the nature of the data and therefore we make
use of regression techniques in this work. We develop two
models for the same. One makes use of linear regression,
while the other makes use of neural networks.
A. Proposed Models and Results
In this subsection, we present the two proposed machine
learning models for estimating the N, P, and K categories in
the soil based on the pH and EC measurements of the soil.
In the Kaggle dataset, N, P, and K content in the soil varies Fig. 2. Phosphorus content (mg/Kg) in the soil: actual versus estimated
in the range 0-350, 0-90, and 0-400, respectively. This is using linear regression. (blue *: actual; red +: predicted)
first classified into three categories, namely, low, medium 2) Neural Networks: Getting useful insights from using
and high as presented in Table II. The two models in Table the linear regression model for NPK estimation, we move
III along with their results are presented next. to a more complex and better estimator. We make use of a
1) Linear Regression: In the first method, we use linear neural network with 9 hidden layers and 40 neurons in each
regression to estimate the N, P and K values and thereafter layer to estimate the NPK values. The input layer consists of
classify them as low, medium or high based on Table II. 5 neurons. To feed these 5 neurons, the two inputs (pH and
The dataset is split into training set and testing set. Training EC) are processed to convert them into 5 inputs as (pH, EC,
set comprises of 80% of the whole data, while testing set pH*EC, pH*pH, EC*EC). This input data is used to train
contains 20% of the whole dataset. the neural network after normalization. Rectified linear unit
The actual as well as the estimated N, P and K values (ReLU) activation function is used at each of the neurons
using linear regression is shown in Figs. 1, 2 and 3, in the hidden layer. Loss function used here is the mean

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Fig. 3. Potassium content (mg/Kg) in the soil: actual versus estimated
using linear regression. (blue *: actual; red +: predicted)
Fig. 4. Nitrogen content (mg/Kg) in the soil: actual versus estimated using
neural networks. (blue *: actual; red +: predicted)
squared error (MSE). Adam optimizer is used with 0.001
learning rate.
Figs. 4, 5, and 6 present the actual and the estimate N, P
and K values respectively. The units of N, P, and K in fig
1, fig 2, fig 3 are in mg/kg. In this case, we observe that
the estimated values of N, P and K are close to the actual
and better estimated than the linear regression case.
Estimated N, P and K values are classified into low,
medium and high using Table II. The classification accuracy
in this case is 83.34% for Nitrogen, 75.39% for Phosphorus
and 76.81% for Potassium. We observe that this model
provides a better result than the previous case with clas-
sification accuracy > 75% for all the elements.
A summary of the classification accuracy in the two
models is shown in Table IV.
Fig. 5. Phosphorus content (mg/Kg) in the soil: actual versus estimated
using neural networks. (blue *: actual; red +: predicted)
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Fig. 6. Potassium content (mg/Kg) in the soil: actual versus estimated
using neural networks. (blue *: actual; red +: predicted)
TABLE IV
C LASSIFICATION ACCURACY OF N, P, AND K USING L INEAR
R EGRESSION AND N EURAL N ETWORKS
Model N P K
Linear Regression 60.73% 51.54% 51.09%
Neural Networks 81.34% 75.39% 76.81%
B. Key Takeaways
We observe that, in general, neural networks provide
better estimation accuracy as compared to the linear re-
gression. We conclude that the relation between N, P, K,
pH and EC is non-linear. Further classification accuracy
of Nitrogen is better than the other two. Though neural
network gives better results, it comes with an expense of
increased computational complexity. Next, we present an
optical sensing method to classify N, P and K content in
the soil.
III. O PTICAL S ENSING M ETHOD
N, P and K in the soil absorb specific wavelengths
incident on it. N absorbs wavelength from 438 - 490 nm,
P absorbs wavelength from 528 - 579 nm, while K absorbs
wavelength from 605 - 650 nm. These wavelengths are close
to the specific colors found in the visible light spectrum. For
example, red occupies a wavelength of 650 nm. Similarly,
blue and green colors occupy 450 and 550 nm, respectively.
Therefore, in this optical sensing method, we make use of
the red, blue and green color LEDs to estimate the amount
of K, N and P contained in the soil, respectively. The light
from these LEDs is incident on the soil sample and the
intensity of light reflected from the soil sample is measured
to estimate the N, P and K content. Fig. 7 presents the
experimental setup for the optical sensing method.
Here three LEDs of three different colours (red, green
and blue) are used to incident the light on the soil sam-
ple. The reflected light is incident on a light dependent
resistor (LDR). Depending on the reflected light intensity,
the resistance of LDR changes which results in change in
the voltage level which is fed to the Arduino board. The
Arduino measures the absorbed and reflected light intensity
by the soil and estimates the N, P and K content in the soil.
The estimation mechanism is presented later in this Section.
The same is displayed on an LCD display.
 TABLE VI
R EFLECTED LIGHT INTENSITY OBTAINED FROM SAMPLES USING
VARIOUS LED S
Sample Blue LED (in lx) Red LED (in lx) Green LED (in lx)
1 25 34.5 32.5
2 27 34 29.5
3 29 37.8 29.5
4 25 33 29
5 21 33 31
6 23 35.5 31
7 20 33 28
8 20 34 30
Fig. 7. Experimental Setup For Optical Sensing 9 21-22 34 31
10 18-19 36 29

A. Data Samples Collected

The soil samples were collected from ten different agri-
cultural fields from the place Vizianagaram located in
Andhra Pradesh state of India. From the collected soil
samples we measured the content of N, P and K in the
soil. Also, we measured the soil’s EC and pH values. For
measuring EC and pH, their respective sensors were used
as mentioned in Section III. To calculate the N, P and K
content in the soil samples, soil rapitest kit was used [15].
The rapitest kit classifies the content of N, P and K in soil
into one of the five categories - depleted, deficient, adequate,
sufficient, and surplus. Our aim is to find a relation between
the N, P and K categories and red, green and blue light
absorbed/reflected by the soil.
The values of N, P, K, EC and pH for different soil
samples is tabulated in Table V. Intensity of reflected light
for various colors in these soil samples is tabulated in Table
VI. Next we present the model to predict the N, P, and K
values from the absorbed and reflected light incident on the
soil.
TABLE V
R ESULTS O BTAINED FROM O PTICAL S ENSING M ETHOD
Sample EC pH N P K
Beer-Lambert’s law. The absorbed light intensities are de-
noted as Ra , Ga , and Ba for red, green and blue colors,
respectively. From the reflected and absorbed light intensi-
ties, the N, P and K values are classified.
We use curve fitting function in Matlab to obtain a func-
tion of element class based on the reflected and absorbed
light intensities. Four curves, namely, linear, quadratic,
cubic and 4th degree polynomial curves are fitted for
each element to see its dependency on the different light
intensities. For example, for N, Fig. 8 shows the N content
in the soil and the corresponding reflected light intensity of
red color incident on the soil sample. Here, the N content
is labelled from 1-5 corresponding to the content being
depleted (1), deficient (2), adequate (3), sufficient (4), and
surplus (5). In this figure, we also present the different
curves that are fitted to estimate the N content based on
the reflected light intensity for red color.
3
Data points
Linear fit
2.5
Quadratic fit
Cubic fit
4th Degree polynomial fit
2
N content

No. (in µS) 1.5

1 1782 7.6 Deficient Deficient Adequate
2 1566 7.3 Adequate Adequate Adequate 1
3 1620 7.0 Deficient Deficient Sufficient
4 2626 7.6 Deficient Deficient Sufficient 0.5
5 1460 6.7 Depleted Adequate Sufficient
0
6 1230 7.4 Deficient Adequate Deficient 33 33.5 34 34.5 35 35.5 36 36.5 37 37.5
7 1187 7.4 Depleted Deficient Adequate Intensity of red light reflected
8 1423 6.8 Deficient Sufficient Depleted
9 1044 7.4 Depleted Deficient Adequate Fig. 8. N content Vs Reflected Light Intensity of Red LED (in lx)
10 1410 7.5 Depleted Deficient Depleted
To present a quantitative measure of the degree to which
the function fits well for the input and output, we specify
B. Element Classification and Results the coefficient of determination. The coefficient of determi-
In this subsection, we present the N, P and K content nation, D2 specifies how the difference in output can be
estimation from the reflected and absorbed light intensities. explained by the difference in input. It ranges between 0
The light from the LED is incident on the soil sample. The and 1, with 0 meaning no relation between input and output,
reflected light from the soil sample is incident on a light while 1 meaning perfect relation between input and output.
dependent resistor (LDR) whose resistance changes based For each element (N, P and K) and for each colors re-
on the reflected light intensity. The voltage across the LDR flection and absorbance intensities, we obtain the coefficient
is measured which is directly proportional to the reflected of determination, D2 to see how much the N, P and K
light intensity. The reflected light intensities are denoted as contents depend on the LED light intensities. The coefficient
Rr , Gr , and Br for red, green and blue colors, respectively. of determination for N, P and K is presented in Table VII,
Further, the absorbed light intensity can be computed VIII and IX, respectively.
from the reflected and incident light intensity using the From Tables VII - IX, we observe that the N, P and

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 TABLE VII terms of accuracy. On the other hand, the optical sensing
C OEFFICIENT OF DETERMINATION (D2 ) VALUES BETWEEN N ITROGEN method highlighted a new method to estimate the N, P and
CONTENT (N) AND L IGHT I NTENSITY ABSORBED , REFLECTED FROM
LED’ S R ED , B LUE , G REEN K content in soil. Both these methods can be implemented
Order Ra Ga Ba Rr Gr Br on an electronic device that can instantly provide the N, P
1st 0.0225 0.0065 0.5251 0.0237 0.0074 0.5329 and K values without the use of any chemicals or reusable
2nd 0.0560 0.0486 0.5433 0.06185 0.05943 0.5355 materials and the results can be obtained without any delay.
3rd 0.2691 0.3785 0.6406 0.2649 0.3451 0.6121
4th 0.3167 0.5077 0.7291 0.3138 0.513 0.7284
Future work would include improving the accuracy of
the two methods. One way could be to combine the two
methods to obtain a higher accuracy. For the optical sensing
TABLE VIII
C OEFFICIENT OF DETERMINATION (D2 ) VALUES BETWEEN method, the scheme could be analysed for soil samples
PHOSPHOROUS CONTENT (P) AND L IGHT I NTENSITY ABSORBED , collected from a diverse set of fields.The proposed schemes
REFLECTED FROM LED’ S R ED , B LUE , G REEN can be used to reduce excessive use of fertilizers in the soil
Order Ra Ga Ba Rr Gr Br as well as provide an economical and efficient solution to
1st 0.01947 0.0070 0.0086 0.0196 0.0097 0.0075
2nd 0.0199 0.3876 0.0275 0.0206 0.3851 0.0152 increase crop quality and yield.
3rd 0.1448 0.3879 0.1690 0.1457 0.3895 0.2045 R EFERENCES
4th 0.1475 0.8335 0.2758 0.1495 0.8295 0.2679
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