Rural
24 August, 2026
PSS Ag bringing ‘radicle’ innovation to farming
Horsham has become home to one of the new Radicle labs, a state-of-the-art automated laboratory that provides high-quality soil analysis.
The lab is a product of Radicle Ag Solutions, a sister company to Precision Seeding Solutions Ag (PSS Ag), an Australian distributor of Precision Planting Products.
PSS Ag owner David McGavin said the Radicle Lab took 11 years to develop, with its automation delivering a faster, more accurate process than typical soil testing.
“In 2015, Precision Planting released a product called the SmartFirmer; you drag it in the ground behind a planter, and it reads moisture, temperature and organic matter,” Mr McGavin said.
“When they built that product, they had customers asking whether they could use it to build a soil recommendation.”
That simple request prompted a series of questions and a decade of research and development.
“The 11 years of development gets them to the Radicle Lab, which is capable of processing a soil sample every seven minutes,” Mr McGavin said.
“The first sample takes about 20 minutes, and then every seven minutes after that another sample comes out.
“Once that sample goes in, all of the analysis is mechanised. That takes out all the variability that comes with a traditional soil lab, where there may be 20 to 30 different manual handling processes.
“Now, the biggest variable comes from the person pulling the soil out of the ground.”
He said that when clients receive their results quickly, they become more engaged with them.
“That's Precision Planting's focus: to change the way we look at soil and make a real industry change,” Mr McGavin said.
OptiSoil, a soil management solutions company that works with farmers in the Wimmera, has started integrating Radicle Lab into its service.
Ned Skehan, owner of OptiSoil, said that using the Radicle Lab allows his team to focus on their consultancy work while increasing the potential for optimal yields for clients.
“Our business is focused on soil contrast management, so we understand what's happening in the soil, come up with a diagnosis and some solutions if there are any issues, and go from there,” he said.
“There's a lot of work that we still do that's really repetitive, and it doesn't feed into our more soil-specific consultancy work; grid mapping for pH and phosphorus, things like that.
“All it really does is compete with any other lab and takes our focus away from doing what we really want to do.
“So for us, Radicle is a way to siphon all of that work straight through a system that's consistent and fast.”
PSS Ag and the Radicle Lab are located at 80 McPherson Street, Horsham.