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This work presents SoilNutri, a fully passive and battery-free metasurface capsule that enables simultaneous, high-precision monitoring of soil moisture and nitrogen concentration. The system employs a complementary split-ring (CSR) metasurface integrated within a sandwich-structured capsule that provides electromagnetic isolation and stable coupling with the surrounding soil. A lightweight two-stage soil-meta-VAE framework reconstructs soil-distorted reflection spectra and jointly predicts moisture and nitrogen from a shared latent representation. Extensive in-lab and field experiments demonstrate high-precision moisture estimation with 0.64% MAE and ppm-level nitrogen prediction with 5.14 ppm MAE across diverse soil types, depths, and seasonal conditions. With a per-unit cost below $1 and a reusable encapsulated design, SoilNutri offers a scalable, sustainable, and physically interpretable solution for multi-nutrient, in-situ soil monitoring for next-generation smart agriculture.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3789674","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,16]],"date-time":"2026-03-16T17:51:14Z","timestamp":1773683474000},"page":"1-28","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["SoilNutri: A Passive Metasurface-based, Low-cost System for Soil Moisture and Nitrogen Monitoring"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"10","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0006-4330-7098","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Juexing","family":"Wang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-8484-0362","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Binbin","family":"Xie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8699-539X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yimeng","family":"Liu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1913-846X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Minhao","family":"Cui","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7392-3477","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiao","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer and Information Science, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Dearborn, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9353-9042","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Guangjing","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-9563-1398","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Ke","family":"Sun","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8159-9072","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Zhichao","family":"Cao","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3272-5239","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Huacheng","family":"Zeng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"CSE, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4825-4803","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Qingxu","family":"Jin","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2400-1916","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Younsuk","family":"Dong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Michigan State University, EAST LANSING, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3298-5265","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hui","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5396-4554","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jie","family":"Xiong","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore, Singapore"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0808-2285","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Tianxing","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","unstructured":"2025. 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