May smart technologies reduce the environmental impact of nitrogen fertilization? A case study for paddy rice.

Precision agriculture is increasingly considered as a powerful solution to mitigate the environmental impact of farming systems. This is because of its ability to use multi-source information in decision support systems to increase the efficiency of farm management. Among the agronomic practices for which precision agriculture concepts were applied in research and operational contexts, variable rate (VR) nitrogen fertilization plays a key role.