Our software · Agriculture
It's in the soil. It never reaches the plant.
Much of the fertilizer applied never reaches the plant: it washes away or gets locked in the soil. Nutrients that are plentiful in the soil come up short in the leaf. We are working on this from two separate directions.
Runs soil, rocks, irrigation water, organic and synthetic fertilizers, climate and time together in one calculation. Shows what a fertilizer program will do in the soil, month by month, before you apply it.
Working version · pilot program open02Organic chelatorAn organic material designed to free nutrients locked in the soil and carry them to the roots, without adding a salt load to the soil.
In the lab01 · Agriculture software
Nothing in a field happens on its own.
Today, decisions for a field are made by reading the soil test, the water test, the fertilizer plan and the climate one by one. Each gives its own number and none takes the others into account. Yet in the field, fertilizer reacts with the soil's minerals, irrigation water with the fertilizer, climate with all of them, and each changes the others' outcome. Part of the fertilizer washes away, part gets locked in the soil, and the plant goes hungry while the stock sits in the ground.
Everything that goes in together
Not one at a time. All of it, at once.
Each of these is a field of expertise in its own right and is usually assessed on its own. We run them all together in one calculation, day by day and layer by layer through the soil.
- What reaches the plant
- What washes away, and when
- What gets locked in the soil
- When an organic input's nutrients are released
- What happens to salts and lime
- Which input, how much, and when
One thing these calculations show again and again: another nutrient that already dominates the soil often eats up what a material contributes. The same material works in one field and does nothing in the next. That's why a fixed list saying "this product does this much" misleads. The real variable is the soil itself.
Questions it answers
The questions a field raises, from one calculation.
Dose is only one of the questions. The calculation answers the field's other questions from the same data.
- Which nutrients are short in this field, and which are in excess?
- When and why is the fertilizer I apply being lost?
- When should I apply it?
- Which organic input, and how much? When does it release its nutrients, and does that match the crop's needs?
- What is my irrigation water doing to the soil? Do I need to acidify it?
- Drip or furrow?
- Which crop suits this soil better?
- Will rock dust, zeolite or another mineral input work in this soil?
- Is the soil's nutrient reserve holding up over the years, or building up?
- Which test should I order? Which measurement would change the answer most?
- Can I get the same harvest with fewer inputs?
In one field · synthetic fertilizer program
Same harvest. A third of the loss.
A strawberry field in the Aegean. The soil test, the irrigation water, two years of local climate and the field's synthetic fertilizer program went into the calculation. The question here: with the same fertilizers, can the same nutrition at both harvests come from fewer inputs?
At harvest, each nutrient's share reaching the plant is within 2 points of the current program, and higher for nitrogen.
Nitrogen leached, period by period
Most of the loss happens in winter, with the first heavy rains. The calculated program cuts the first winter's loss from 90 to 13 kg/ha, and the second winter's from 48 to 2. The trade-off comes in spring: when the plant starts drawing, a little more nitrogen moves in the soil water.
| Summer-fall year 1 | 7.4 | 1.3 |
|---|---|---|
| Winter year 1 | 90.5 | 13 |
| Spring, harvest year 1 | 14.3 | 19.2 |
| Summer-fall year 2 | 44.9 | 17.5 |
| Winter year 2 | 48.4 | 2.2 |
| Spring, harvest year 2 | 6.1 | 13.7 |
The calculation showed something else: cut the nitrogen and the magnesium reaching the plant drops too. Fertilizers aren't independent of each other. A table that trims one on its own misses the other.
These are calculations, not yet field-tested. Every assumption behind each number is written in the report.
Same field, two readings
What a soil test can't tell you.
| Topic | Soil test and fertilizer plan | The calculation |
|---|---|---|
| Nitrogen | You know some will be lost; not how much or when. | 212 kg/ha over two years. Two thirds between November and February; all of the first winter's loss comes from the nitrogen given at planting. |
| Potassium | Soil potassium reads "low". | The program supplies twice the demand. Soil potassium rises 2.4 times in two years, and the excess washes out every winter. |
| Phosphorus | Phosphorus looks sufficient; if short, you add more. | 95% of added phosphorus gets bound in the soil. Doubling the fertilizer makes only a 5 point difference to the plant. |
| Irrigation water | It says pH 7.5. | Bicarbonate decides: 0.9 to 1.6 tonnes of lime per hectare settle out each season. That's what clogs the drippers. |
| Acidifying the water | 2.5 kg of acid per decare per year, to clean the lines. | The nitric acid needed to acidify the water continuously quietly adds more nitrogen to the soil than the program's whole yearly amount. |
Principle
It tells you what it doesn't know.
not calculated- It never presents a calculation as a measurement.
- It doesn't write zero for an effect it didn't model. It says "not calculated".
- When more than one explanation fits, it doesn't quietly pick one; it shows both.
- When it can't explain a result, it doesn't claim a cause; it asks for the missing measurement by name. In the strawberry field, one unmeasured soil value decided the fate of phosphorus; the report asked for that measurement and gave its outcome as a written prediction before it was made.
These rules aren't just on paper: the system checks itself with more than 360 automated tests on every change.
Who it's for
- Soil and plant testing laboratories
- R&D teams and universities
- Fertilizer and input manufacturers
- Agronomists and farm advisors
For growers, we're preparing a simpler screen that works with far less input.
Where we are
There's a working version that calculates synthetic and organic fertilizer programs from real field data and produces reports. We don't offer it commercially yet. Next comes the fertilizer program's carbon footprint, with the source of every coefficient written beside it.
02 · Organic chelator
An organic material that unlocks trapped nutrients.
The gap between how much of a nutrient the soil holds and how much is dissolved and available to the plant varies by thousands of times from element to element. The nutrient is there, but bound to mineral surfaces and the soil. Adding more fertilizer doesn't fix it; what you add gets bound the same way.
Total in the soil, as a multiple of what's dissolved in soils we measured ourselves
Four things it's designed to do
- 01Release
Mobilizes nutrients bound in the soil and on mineral surfaces.
- 02Carry
Moves the freed nutrients to the root zone.
- 03Deliver
Lets them go where and when the plant can take them up.
- 04Adds no salt
Does all of this without adding a salt load to the soil.
Defined by what it does
Similar products are mostly sold on what they contain, and those made by chemical extraction also carry salt into the soil. We define ours by what it does: which nutrient it frees and how much, how far it carries it, where it lets go, how long it stays active in the root zone. We'll compare on cost per measured effect, because price per liter misleads.
Where we are
The material has been developed, and the first lab screening gave a strong, consistent result. Before offering it as a product we're completing an eleven-point measurement program. We're working on two forms, liquid and powder.
Who it's for
- Fertilizer and input manufacturers
- Formulators
- Greenhouse growers
- Fruit and seedling producers
The two products run independently. Later, the software will also be used to work out in which soils, and at what dose, this material pays off.
Pilot and partnership
Let's run the numbers on your field together.
For the software, your soil and water tests and your fertilizer program are all we need. For the chelator, we're open to sample and partnership talks. Leave your number and our team will call you. Or ask our advisor first.
or write to us: hello@tantoros.com