S.I. Futerman 

Y. Laor 

G. Eshel 

Y. Cohen 

Quantifying spatial variability of soil nutrients is of great importance as it has direct effect on crop production and environmental pollution. A novel approach is proposed suggesting that the practice of cover crops (CC), together with remote sensing (RS), may reflect the spatial variation in soil nutrient availability. This concept was examined in a study in the Model Farm For Sustainable Agriculture in Neve Ya’ar, Northern Israel. The study had two main goals: (1) inspecting and measuring CC nutrient uptake and biomass based on visual symptoms of nutrient deficiencies; (2) using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with an RGB camera to classify CC into groups of interest; (3) using the information to generate high-resolution spatial nutrient uptake maps. The gathered information is aimed at guiding soil sampling schemes and potentially for basal fertilizer applications for the following cash crop