A new funding round of Australia’s National Soil Carbon Innovation Challenge will provide grants of up to $20 million to advance technologies that reduce soil carbon measurement cost. The first round of Development and Demonstration funding aims to fast-track the development of a lower-cost soil carbon measurement approach.
The submissions for the grant are open till 3rd March 2022, and the applicants will need to contribute at least 20% of eligible expenditure and submit their technologies feasibility study.
The challenge will help remove barriers in increasing soil carbon measurement. Farmers will earn income or carbon credit through the Emission Reduction Fund for increasing the amount of carbon stored in the soil. This will directly improve farm productivity and crop yield through water retention and better nutrition.
Grant guidelines for the second round will be released soon. The total funding for the second phase of the challenges is $50 million. A further $9 million and any other remaining uncommitted funding from this round will open for applications in the second half of this year.
Other potential opportunities to reduce measurement costs may include modeling soil carbon, increasing confidence in remote sensing estimation, and reducing physical sampling frequency by advanced laboratory and in-field sensing techniques.
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