Use of the farmer’s experience variable in the generation of management zones

Abstract

In the spatial variability management of fields, the approach based on management zones (MZs) divides the area into sub-regions, which have spatially homogeneous topography and soil conditions. Such MZs should lead to the same potential yields. Farmers understand which areas of a field have high and low yields, and use of this knowledge may allow the identification of MZs in a field based on production history. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the application of farmer's experience to determine MZs. The study was conducted in three agricultural fields located in the west of the Paraná State in Brazil, and the MZs were generated considering three cases: a) without the use of the farmer’s experience variable; b) with the variable of farmer’s experience and the stable soil properties selected at the variable selection stage; and c) only with the farmer’s experience variable. The generated MZs were evaluated using the Variance Reduction (VR) index, Fuzziness Performance Index (FPI), Modified Partition Entropy (MPE), Smooth Index (SI), and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The study showed that the use of farmer’s experience to set MZs could be an efficient and simple tool, that it could reduce costs for the processes of setting MZs, compared to the traditional method of using stable soil variables and relief.