USDA-SBIR support for greenhouse gas monitoring tech

The Rowbot team is excited to have been selected as a recipient of a Phase I small business innovation research (SBIR) grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. This grant has enabled us to develop a second generation chamber (FluxBot™) for measuring fluxes of nitrous oxide—an extremely potent greenhouse gas—as well as carbon dioxide. We are digesting results from the 2024 growing season and setting our goals for work over the winter and leading up to the 2025 growing season, which should be a busy one for this project.

The two images below show a FluxBot chamber being tested along side a conventional chamber. Many thanks to our USDA-ARS collaborators in St. Paul, and USDA-NIFA for funding.

Our grand plan for this patent-protected technology is that these chambers would eventually be moved around by a ground robot, enabling sampling at a variety of locations across a field. This would greatly increase temporal and spatial sampling, the combination of which is difficult with today’s technology.