Short project description

Precision Agriculture (PA) is “a management strategy that takes account of temporal and spatial variability to improve sustainability of agricultural production” (www.ispag.org). There are several key elements to consider in such definition: The agronomic component which considers the field management, and the economic and environmental sustainability of production aiming at keeping farming highly productive and profitable with lower environmental impacts. PA distinguishes itself from classical agronomic trials because it attempts to consider the spatial (within a field or between fields) and temporal (during a growing season and/or between growing seasons) variability of the factors affecting nutrient dynamics (e.g., topography, soil organic carbon, soil texture). It thus attempts to analyse the multiple factors at play in farmers’ fields rather than a few isolated ones.

With this project we will be able to quantify in space and time the plant-soil continuum (e.g., N2O emissions, soil nitrogen, plant biomass/nitrogen, soil water) of different fertilization strategies in a 5 ha field. Ultimately, the aim of this PA-focused project is to understand the best rate and time to apply nitrogen fertilizers to crops, to make informed management decisions that increase the sustainability of agricultural systems.