European experience with variable rate fertilizer application (VRA)

Abstract

Modern fertilization strategies handle the amount of applied fertilizer according to the demands of crops and paddocks. Besides agronomic and economic reasons increasingly also environmental sensitivities (soils, water-bodies, biotopes) have to be respected in fertilization. N-demand and sensitivities are not distributed uniformly over paddocks and within landscapes. The concepts and techniques of precision agriculture (based on sensors, GIS, GNSS) allow addressing these spatially varying requirements in different ways. Outcomes are fertilizer rates that vary over space (‘variable rate applications’, VRA). Different approaches support VRA for N, P, K, lime and manure.