SOIL SENSOR-BASED VARIABLE RATE PHOSPHORUS FERTILIZATION

Precision agriculture aims to increase farm profits and reduce environmental impacts by adjusting production inputs, such as fertilizers, to specific levels appropriate to each area of a field. Characterising the soil spatial variability within fields is the first important step towards implementation of precision agriculture. The study of spatial variability of soil phosphorus within a field revealed that, variable rate phosphorus fertilization should be implemented over small areas. This can be achieved using an on-the-go phosphorus fertilization system. For on-the-go phosphorus fertilization, three important elements are required: a soil sensor to gather soil information while travelling across a field, a model to derive the actual soil phosphorus and a recommendation model to predict corresponding application rate. In this book, a strategy is described for developing a variable rate fertilization system using a soil sensor for on-the- go phosphorus application.