Similarity between crop management zones determined with different procedures

LÓPEZ DE SABANDO, MJ; DÍAZ-ZORITA, M.; MERCURI, P

Denver, CO. USA

Congreso; 9° International Conference on Precision Agriculture; 2008

Colorado State Univ.//IPNI//Foundation for Agronomic Res.

The crop productivity within fields is heterogeneous and it responds to the variation in in crop management patterns, and in previous, random, and natural crop management factors. The variation present in each field must be considered in soil sampling. Thus, one of the strategies is to define management zones (MZ). However, there is no agreement in the methodology to be used for the delimitation of MZ. The objective of this study was to quantify the differences in the surface properties of Typical Argiudoll soils representative of the Rolling Pampas after the delimitation of MZ based on five methodologies. In 3 wheat production fields, high (H), medium (M) and low (L) productivity MZ were defined based on yield mapping (YM), photointerpretation of satellite images, soil mapping (SM), previous management practices (MH), and standardized sums (SS). Soil clay, sand, silt, total organic carbon (TOC), extractable P (e-P), total Nitrogen, nitrates contents (N0-20), pH and electric conductivity between 0 and 0.2 m were determined in each MZ. SS determined a higher content of TOC in High MZ than in Low MZ. YM showed that the M MZ presented a higher clay content (>21%) and a lower silt content (>12%) than the H and L MZ; additionally, the H MZ showed a higher level of N0-20 (>16%) than the M MZ. SM displayed lower contents of sand in the H MZ. The use of SS, SM, and YM methodologies for MZ delimitation is a recommendable strategy for appropriate crop management practices.