Kazakhstan and Russia to study soil fertility using AI

Researchers from Kazakhstan and Russia will use artificial intelligence to determine how quickly arable land loses fertility and which tillage practices help preserve it. The models will compare data on fields, weather and farming technologies.

The focus is on organic carbon: its stocks are used to judge soil condition and the environmental impact of farming. The system will not only record current values but also calculate how they may change under different farm management approaches.

Data for training the models is being collected at the Kaz Agro Carbon experimental site, which has operated since October 2025 at the A. I. Barayev Research and Production Center for Grain Farming. Instruments across 70 hectares record soil properties, weather and greenhouse gas exchange. These measurements will be supplemented with Earth remote sensing data.

The project is being implemented by the National Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan and the Federal Scientific Center of Agroecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In the future, it may form the basis of a digital tool for assessing the impact of farming technologies on land and preparing recommendations on maintaining fertility and reducing emissions. For now, the work remains at the research stage.