A planting prescription is a digital map that tells a planter how many seeds to plant at each location within a field. Instead of a uniform seeding rate, the prescription defines zones with different target populations — higher rates in productive areas that can support more plants, lower rates in poor-performing zones where extra seed is wasted. The planter reads this map in real time via GPS and adjusts seed meters automatically.
Prescription Structure
Through FieldMCP, planting prescriptions are represented as GeoJSON FeatureCollections where each feature is a zone with properties:
- Geometry — Polygon defining the zone boundary within the field boundary
- Rate — Target seeding rate (seeds per acre or plants per hectare)
- Product — Seed variety/hybrid identifier
- Depth — Target planting depth (when variable)
How Prescriptions Are Created
Prescriptions are typically generated from one or more data layers:
- Yield-based — Analyze multi-year yield maps to identify productivity zones. High-yield zones get higher seeding rates.
- Soil-based — Use soil sampling data (organic matter, water-holding capacity) to define zones correlated with yield potential.
- Imagery-based — Use NDVI or bare-soil imagery to delineate management zones.
- AI-generated — LLMs connected through FieldMCP's MCP interface can analyze multiple data layers simultaneously and generate optimized prescriptions.
Developer Integration Patterns
- Read existing prescriptions — Pull prescriptions from the farmer's FMIS to display or analyze
- Write new prescriptions — Generate prescriptions programmatically and push them to the farmer's equipment platform
- Compare planned vs. actual — Match the prescription against as-applied data from equipment telematics to measure execution accuracy
Getting Started
See the tools reference for prescription-related MCP tools and the variable rate technology glossary entry for the broader VRT context.
