Determination of soil pH using a cartesian coordinate laboratory robot and electronic switchbox

Abstract

A commercially available Cartesian coordinate (gantry style) robot has been programmed to sequentially determine soil/water pH (pH w ) using a desk-top computer, electronic switchbox, pH meter and a bank of five combination electrodes. All movements of the robot together with pH w data acquisition are orchestrated by the computer. Once the pH w data has been acquired, it is stored in an array for subsequent transfer to a Laboratory Information Management System.

Automated Robotic Assay of Phosphomonoesterase Activity in Soils

“…This is especially true of soil monitoring and landscapelevel studies where large numbers of samples are often collected. While robotic analysis systems have been developed for routine analysis of soil characteristics (Quigley and Reid, 1998;Hill et al, 2002), pesticides in soil and water (Koskinen et al, 1991;Kraemer 1997), and microbial and enzymatic activity in dairy and food products (Richardson et al, 1988), there have been no reports on the use of robotic systems to analyze microbial enzyme activities in soils.…”