Precision
Agriculture is a collection of agricultural practices that focus on specific
areas of the field at a particular moment in time. This is opposed to more
traditional practices where the various crop treatments, such as irrigation,
application of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides were evenly applied to
the entire field, ignoring any variability within the field. Having information
on potential crop yield at an early stage, is very beneficial for the farmer,
but also for countries that heavily rely on agricultural production, to satisfy
the national needs for the crops and also for income through exports. There is
lot of factor can affect the yield of the crop such as soil type, chlorophyll
content, watering and irrigation, fertilizer application and agriculture
practice itself. Some data, such as soil moisture, vegetation cover, and
chlorophyll content can be measured through remote sensing (RS). Other soil
properties however, require sampling of soil cores and analysis of those
samples in a lab such as phosphorus (P) contamination, Potassium (K) and soil
acidity (pH). As long as the location of the samples is recorded through
a GPS, it is possible to create a soil map of the field in GIS system. Then the
soil map will show the distribution for each characteristic of the soil. Once
we have collect all the necessary data (variable)from remote sensing, soil data
from lab, we can now compile the data in GIS platform to study the relationship
between those data.
There
is a strong correlation between data such as soil type and watering system, and
watering system and chlorophyll content. Based on the data, we can create the
spatial variability model and study the correlation between each variable
(data). Base on this model, we can adjust the variable (data) in according to
the crop status. For example, we already know soil (variable) characteristic in
the crop field, so we can adjust the fertilizer application based on the
suitability of soil characteristic to supply the nutrient to the crop base on
their need. So, the fertilizer apply is only on the curtain area needed compare
to conventional practice that apply the same fertilizer for entire field area.
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