found on agricultural landscapes. Steps involving precision agriculture include

determining yield variability in a field, determining its cause, deciding on possible

solutions based on economic justification, implementing new techniques and repeating

the procedure in a cyclic approach. Precision agriculture techniques could be used to

improve economic and environmental sustainability in crop production.

 Global positioning system (GPS), geographical information system (GIS), remote

sensing (RS), variable rate technology (VRT), yield mapping, and advances in sensor and

information technology have enabled the farmer to visualize the entire field in a way, that

could help manage the agricultural operations efficiently and improve overall

productivity. With precision agriculture technologies, the farmer could effectively

manage the crop throughout its life cycle, starting from preparing soil, sowing seeds,

applying fertilizers/pesticides and finally estimating yield during harvesting based on

each individual plant, thus reducing the waste of resources due to in-field variability.

 Among precision agriculture technologies, yield mapping is the first step to

implement site-specific crop management on a specific field. A yield mapping system

measures and records the amount of crop harvested at any point in the field along with

the position of the harvesting system. This collected data could be used to produce a yield

map using mapping software. Yield maps are useful resources to identify variabilities

within a field. Variability in an agricultural field is due to man-made or natural sources.

A natural variability may be due to seasonal change in weather pattern or rainfall over

several years. Examples of man-made variabilities include improper distribution of

irrigation/drainage facilities for field and excessive/deficit application of farm inputs.