Soil Cone Penetrometer

Soil Cone Penetrometer(34kb)

The soil cone penetrometer is an instrument that has great potential to quickly provide answers to what is going on in the soil - it gives an 'x-ray' into the root zone. You can easily find out...

What is it ?

The soil cone penetrometer is a 12mm dia rod with a handle at one end and a cone tip at the other. The rod is pushed into the soil, with the force required recorded at different depths. This force is the strength of the soil (in MPa or p.s.i) at different depths in the profile.

Wine grape roots are not able to penetrate soil with a strength higher than 2 MPa, so maximum possible rooting depth is immediately obtained.

Software

RSNE Penetrometer software can import the data from penetrometers, or the readings can be entered manually. The values can be plotted as profile graphs, or as a map.

Profile graphs (13973 bytes)

Tests are selected from the list. Also shown is...

Overlaid graphs

fig1.gif (16407 bytes)

Several test can be selected - they could be from this site, or other sites.

Map

fig2.gif (16418 bytes)

Tests can be plotted on a map, showing average MPa. Alternatively each test could show the rooting depth.

The X,Y coordinates can be manually entered by by the user, or could be from a GPS receiver; or they could simply be row number and vine number

Printing

Printing options (7289 bytes)

Profiles can be printed 1 per page; multiple; or overlaid.