ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,292,306, issued on May 6, was assigned to SOILSERDEM LLC (Amen, Iowa).

"Optimized soil sampling for digital soil fertility mapping using machine learning and remotely-sensed information" was invented by Yones Khaledian (Ames, Iowa) and Daniel Linton (Ames, Iowa).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A soil modeling and mapping framework for use in precision agriculture analyzes remotely-sensed data pertaining to characteristics of one or more agricultural fields, and determines optimal sampling locations from information in remotely-sensed information, terrain derivatives and satellite imagery, to develop a customized sampling design for modelin...