Date of Award

5-2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Plant and Environmental Science

Committee Member

Kirk R Kendall

Committee Member

John D Mueller

Committee Member

Michael T Plumblee

Committee Member

Michael Vassalos

Abstract

Precision agriculture seeks to improve conventional farming practices through the use of Management Zones (MZ). There are many ways to create MZs and it’s not always easy to decide which MZ would provide optimal results for the specified application. Good MZs should have little variation within a zone, but large differences when compared to other zones. Previous research has been inconsistent on the ability of MZs to capture yield variation. One objective of this research was the development and application of the Management Zone Scoring Index (MZSI) to assess efficacy of 13 zone delineation methods at capturing yield data variation. The score was calculated by quantifying the variation of yield data between MZs and dividing this by the variation of yield data within a MZ. This scoring method was applied to 204 MZ’s created using soil and yield data ranging from 2006-2017. Significant differences were observed (F169,12=4.045, p

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