ABSTRACT
Paddy rice is a very intensive crop in terms of both material and labour inputs (Shibusawa et al., 1999). Most traditional farming systems over-apply inputs such as seed, fertilizer and agro-chemicals to reduce the risk of crop failure. In particular, conventional uniform fertilizer application, which does not account for within-field variation in nutrient supply from the soil and the nutrient requirements of the crop, may result in some zones having an excess of nutrients and other zones having a nutrient deficit. Such inefficient fertilizer application has both economic and environmental impacts (Koutroubas and Ntanos, 2003). Precision farming manages field variability by matching resource application and agronomic practices with crop requirements and soil properties in order to improve crop performance and quality. Precision farming in rice production has focused on applying fertilizer more efficiently.
