Precision agriculture (PA) is helping farmers understand more about their fields and crops, which brings benefits with increasing productivity and minimizing inputs. Variable rate technology (VRT) is a critical component in precision agriculture applications. In general, VRT allows farm inputs such as fertilizer, chemicals, and water to be applied at different rates across a field based on the information acquired for the specific site. Map-based and sensor-based are two types of variable rate technologies, and the core components of a variable rate application (VRA) system include information collection, data processing, decision support system development, and applicator design.
As the world population is projected to be nearly 10 billion by 2050, conventional farming is facing challenges to provide enough food with limited resources such as soil and water (FAO 2009). Therefore, it is important to improve farm productivity.
