As part of the PepsiCo Greenhouse Accelerator Program APAC, we asked participants to share their insights and experiences via an ‘Innovation Series’ of articles. The perspectives in this article are those of the author.
Soil is the foundation of everything we eat. It’s also one of the most poorly understood assets in global agriculture, and for that reason it often becomes one of the most under-leveraged.
For decades, farmers and agribusinesses trying to understand what’s actually in their soil have faced the same frustrating reality: dig a sample, send it to a laboratory, wait weeks, receive a report, and hope the results are still relevant by the time they can act.
In a world where crop decisions need to be made in real time, that lag is inconvenient, costly, wasteful, and increasingly untenable. When you test slowly, you manage reactively. When you manage reactively, you often over-correct, under-correct, and miss early signals of degradation until they become yield problems.
At X-Centric Sciences we’re building a better way.
The soil data challenge
Healthy soil plays an important role in productive agriculture and food security. Globally, soil degradation remains a recognised challenge*, with potential implications for farm productivity, input efficiency, and long-term resilience.
In many farming contexts, one practical challenge is access to timely, affordable, and location-specific soil information. While conventional soil testing remains an important and established tool, it may not always be practical to use at the frequency, cost, or level of spatial detail needed to fully understand variability across farming areas.
Common considerations can include:
• Turnaround time: the time between sampling and receiving usable results
• Cost: which may limit the frequency or scale of testing
• Spatial coverage: as budget and logistics can constrain the number of sampling points
• Data integration: where information may sit across different tools, systems, or stakeholders
• Decision flow: where insights may not always move quickly between the field, advisors, and growers.
X-Centric’s solution: bringing laboratory-grade analysis into the field
X-Centric Sciences delivers high-performance, portable soil testing that enables on-site soil characterisation in real time, designed to deliver results with a level of precision intended to support the decisions agricultural businesses need to make, subject to soil type and conditions. Rather than sending samples away and waiting, our instruments allow measurement directly where decisions are made, so the data is useful when it matters.
Our approach uses advanced sensing and analytical technologies to characterise key soil properties – including nutrient levels, organic matter, and moisture – with the precision agriculture businesses need to make confident decisions. In practical terms, we are working to make soil intelligence a practical, accessible tool for the farmers and agribusinesses that need it most.
The potential impact is both operational and sustainability relevant. By enabling timely, on-site soil characterisation, X-Centric’s instruments are designed to support more informed input decisions with the aim of reducing input inefficiencies and potential waste and supporting healthier soil management outcomes over time, subject to local conditions and continued validation of management approaches.
The soil intelligence opportunity
Precision agriculture and soil intelligence are moving rapidly from niche agronomy into mainstream investment interest, driven by food security pressures, climate adaptation needs, and the development of carbon and ecosystem services frameworks.
The soil testing sector remains fragmented and underserved relative to where that demand appears to be heading. X-Centric Sciences is working toward becoming the hardware-enabled soil intelligence provider of choice, with instruments also designed to scale across geographies where laboratory infrastructure is limited and soil health challenges are most acute.
Our target markets – Australia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and China – represent major agricultural footprints aligned with PepsiCo’s sourcing regions. The instruments are designed for real-world deployment conditions, and the data they generate may increase in value as deployment scales and more observations are collected over time.
The infrastructure being built and validated now is a foundation. As deployment extends to new geographies, crops, and use cases, the ambition is to make high-quality soil intelligence a practical, everyday tool for the farmers and agribusinesses that need it most, not just a capability reserved for those with access to premium laboratory services.
🔗 Learn more about X-Centric Sciences
X-Centric Sciences is one of five startups selected for the PepsiCo Greenhouse Program APAC. This article is part of the ‘PepsiCo Greenhouse Program APAC 2026 – Innovation Series’ exploring the global challenges each startup in this year’s cohort is addressing, what they are building, and their potential impact — for PepsiCo, the wider food and beverage industry, and the planet.
*FAO estimates 1.66 billion hectares are degraded due to human activity, with more than 60% affecting agricultural lands; FAO also states 33% of the world’s soils are already degraded.
