Healthy Soils
with Robotics?

At the invitation of the FarmerSpace AI project at the Institute for Sugar Beet Research (IfZ), we had the opportunity to present SoilRob’s latest research findings on May 21, 2026, during a field day focused on “Innovative Cultivation Systems and Robotics in Sugar Beet Farming.

In early May, we welcomed a film crew from Uzbekistan to the ZALF campus. As part of the documentary “The Soil,” the team learned about the importance of soil as a living system, the challenges of soil degradation, and approaches to sustainable and regenerative agriculture.

Lukas Thielemann and Lina Rohlmann from the SoilRob team gained valuable scientific insights at this year’s General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU), which took place in Vienna from May 3 to 8, 2026.

A new field season has begun, and the SoilRob team has already successfully completed the first sampling campaigns of the year. We spent several days in the field in Bavaria on the LfL sites, near Göttingen together with the IfZ, and at our two experimental sites in Brandenburg.

Within the framework of the EU Horizon project BENCHMARKS, around 25 international scientists visited ZALF to exchange ideas on the topic of “spatially diversified cropping systems and technologies for soil health monitoring.” They gained insights both on the patchCROP plots and in our...