At the Eurofins Agro Nederland campus in Wageningen, Netherlands, the laboratory can seem more like a factory. Following the demanding seasonal rhythms of Europe’s planting, growing, and harvest times, more than 80 lab staffers labor to complete high-speed agronomical analyses for thousands of farmers and agribusiness firms.
Large arrays of testing instruments process almost unending streams of samples from field crops, greenhouse plantings, grass, silage, forage, soil, and manure. The lab identifies chemical elements in the samples that can impact fertilization, feed values, soil and crop health, or food safety. Any analytical mistakes might lead to farmers’ planting the wrong crops or supplying the wrong feed — ultimately causing lower harvest yields or less healthy animals.
“It’s a busy lab,” says Eric Elbers, a Eurofins Agro production support and development analyst who specializes in ICP/IR analysis technologies. “During the high season, we do more than 4,000 measurements per day!”
The facility’s mainstay testing models have long included a number of inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICPOES) analyzers. These check samples for high concentrations of critical nutrient elements including potassium (K), calcium (Ca), phosphorus (P), manganese (Mn), magnesium (Mg), boron (B), copper (Cu), sodium (Na), iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), and sulfur (S).
Over the years, the lab at Wageningen applied ICP-OES instruments from several leading makers to these tasks. However, they presented problems with learning curves, or ease of use, or cost of ownership. And all had difficulty meeting the facility’s paramount requirements: maximum throughput with minimum downtime.
Learn more in this compelling case study.
