‘Proof by Underpants’ offers a cheeky way to test soil

You don’t necessarily need advanced sensor technology or fancy tools to assess the health of the soil just beneath your feet. As ecologists and around 1,000 citizen scientists in Switzerland recently demonstrated, sometimes all that’s required is a pair of undies and a shovel.In 2021, a team at the University of Zurich (UZH) partnered with the country’s federal agricultural research center, Agroscope, to launch Beweisstück Unterhose, aka Proof By Underpants. The mission wa