Precision agriculture

Precision agriculture is a management strategy to increase the resolution of agricultural decision-making in response to variability in production. For crop and pasture systems, this variation in production is strongly linked to soil variability. For this reason, improving the ability to measure and map soil variation has been a key factor in Precision Agriculture. This chapter introduces the concept of precision agriculture, provides an overview of the key enabling technologies, with a focus on soil sensing, and discusses the importance of pedometrics and digital soil mapping for decision-making. On-going and emerging links with soil science are also introduced.