Crop-specific technology extrapolation domains for Brazil

Abstract

Climate and soil databases can be used for delineating homogenous environmental zones over large areas of agricultural land to support agricultural research planning and spatial extrapolation of the results of field experiments. In other countries, such framework has proven useful to improve the efficiency and impact of investments in agricultural research. Furthermore, this approach can also contribute to identify key locations with the greatest potential for spatial extrapolation in terms of crop production area with similar climate and soils. In this paper, soil and weather databases covering the main agricultural land in Brazil were developed, and crop-specific technology extrapolation domains (TEDs) were identified for maize, soybean, and sugarcane crops. These databases were useful and viable option for the generation of homogeneous zones maps for different crops and regions. Given the spatial scale of the database applied, it was possible to represent a large area in few TEDs, without losing information regarding climate and soil variability, facilitating the spatial extrapolation of technologies throughout Brazil. Few TEDs are needed to represent a large part of the area of sugarcane (32 TEDs to cover 51% of the area), maize (21 TEDs for 51% of the area), and soybean (17 TEDs for 50% of the total area). Such information may help several areas of the agricultural sector, such as supporting new research that works on areas with large scales, or areas not explored yet.