Tool for the Establishment of Agro-Management Zones Using GIS Techniques for Precision Farming in Egypt

Abstract

Agro-management zones recently became the backbone of modern agriculture. Delineating management zones for Variable-Rate Fertilization (VRF) can provide important ecological benefits and better sustainability of the new Egyptian farming projects. This article aims to represent an approach for delineating management zones using Spatial Multicriteria Evaluation (SMCE) within irrigated peanut pivot situated at the eastern Nile Delta, Egypt. The results indicated that soil data, such as soil texture, soil type, the elevation of the landscape, and slope, allow for sampling the study area into similar classes and in smaller units, along with a crop productivity map. The effects of the variability in soil characteristics within the field on Peanut yields are predicted by the soil suitability model. In addition, final management zones map a varied amount of nutrients that could be added to different pivot zones. In conclusion, mapping soil units with a sufficient number of field observations within each class provided an acceptable accuracy, and a good spatial distribution of the suitability classification was achieved. Hence, agro-management zones are essentially needed for policymakers in a specific field in order to furnish an evaluation about the transformations at a territorial scale and for studying the strategies to realize environmental sustainability and to reduce the territorial impacts.