Decision Agriculture

In this chapter, the latest developments in the field of decision agriculture are discussed. The practice of management zones in digital agriculture is described for efficient and smart faming. Accordingly, the methodology for delineating management zones is presented. Modeling of decision support systems is explained along with discussion of the issues and challenges in this area. Moreover, the precision agriculture technology is also considered. Moreover, the chapter surveys the state of the decision agriculture technologies in the countries such as Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Israel, Malaysia, Pakistan, United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Sweden. Finally, different field factors such as GPS accuracy and crop growth are also analyzed

Delineation of management zones in an apple orchard in Greece using a multivariate approach

Management zone (MZ) delineation is important for the application of Precision Agriculture because farm management decisions are based on it. Several factors were used for the MZ delineation including crop and soil characteristics. In the present paper multivariate analysis was applied to delineate MZs. Soil and crop data, collected over 3 years from a Precision Agriculture project in an apple orchard in Greece, were used. The collected data were categorized in three groups, namely soil properties, yield and fruit quality. All data were analyzed for descriptive statistics and their distribution. Maps of the spatial variability for the 3 years were presented. Data were jointly analyzed for management zone delineation using a combination of multivariate geostatistics with a non-parametric clustering approach, and the orchard was divided in four zones which could be differently managed. However, further research and experimentation are needed before precision horticulture being confidently adopted in Greece. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved