Getting Started for Agronomists

This guide takes you from a fresh portal sign-in to a downloadable, ready-to-fly VRA shapefile in under thirty minutes. If you've made prescription maps in other software, the workflow will feel familiar — the GTRV-specific pieces are flagged inline.

What you'll produce#

By the end of this guide you'll have:

1. A farm, a field, and a plot drawn inside the portal.
2. A prescription map generated from either a recent satellite scene or processed drone imagery.
3. A VRA shapefile that the pilot can load directly into the field controller.

What you need before starting#

• An account with at least Member access. To create farms/fields/plots you need Member or higher. Owners and admins always have full access.
• The field boundary for at least one field. You can draw it directly on the map; you don't need to import a shapefile.
• A clear sense of the prescription preset you want — Recovery, Maintenance, or Neutral. See VRA Prescription if you're not sure.

The big picture#

The Map Prescription workflow has three stages:

1. Select Farm & Field   →   2. Define Plot   →   3. Pick Imagery → Configure Zones → VRA → Estimate → Download

You move through the stages with the Continue button in the right-side panel; you can always step back with Back.

Step 1 — Farm & field#

1. 1

   Open Map Prescription → New

   Click Create New from the Map Prescription home page.

2. 2

   Pick a farm

   Choose an existing farm from the Farm dropdown, or click Add New Farm, name it, and click Create.

3. 3

   Pick or draw a field

   Choose an existing field from the Field dropdown, or click Draw new field. The map enters drawing mode — click to place vertices, click the start point to close the polygon.

4. 4

   Save the field

   Name the field and click Create Field.

Step 2 — Define the plot#

The plot is what the prescription actually covers. Two options:

• Use the existing field boundary — pick an existing plot from the Plot dropdown.
• Draw a new plot — click Create new plot, then Draw plot. The plot must lie entirely inside the field or the portal will refuse to save it.

Click Create Plot, fill in:

• Plot Name (required)
• Crop Type (required): Soybean, Corn, Wheat, Cotton, Sugar cane, Coffee, Rice, Beans, Other
• Season (required), e.g., 2025-26

Click Create Plot to save.

Step 3 — Pick imagery#

You can drive a prescription from either Satellite (Sentinel-2 by default) or Drone (OTM) orthomosaics.

Satellite (fastest)#

1. Click Search Satellite Image.
2. The portal looks for the most recent scene with acceptable cloud cover.
3. Toggle the view between True Color and NDVI (Health) to confirm the scene is usable.
4. Click Save & Proceed.

Drone (highest resolution)#

1. Click Upload Drone Images.
2. In the drawer, pick the farm + field, drag your raw drone images in (or click to browse).
3. Click Start Processing. The job is queued — watch progress on the Photogrammetry tab.
4. Once status reads Completed, return to the wizard, pick the processed dataset from Processed Images, then click Save & Proceed.

See Satellite vs. Drone Imagery for when to pick which.

Step 4 — Configure zones#

You're now in the Zone Editor drawer. Choose:

• How many management zones you want — Low, Medium, High.
• Method to compute the zones:
  • K-Means — equal frequency clustering. Good default for most fields.
  • Jenks Natural Breaks — minimizes within-zone variance. Best when NDVI distribution is bimodal.
  • Quantile — equal-sized groups by area.
  • Equal Interval — equal NDVI range per zone.
• Block size (meters) — 3 to 50. Smaller = finer detail, larger product file.
• Prescription preset:
  • Recovery — apply more product where NDVI is low.
  • Maintenance — apply more product where NDVI is high.
  • Neutral — uniform rates across zones.

Click Generate Zones Automatically.

See Management Zones for a deeper look at each method.

Step 5 — Tune the VRA prescription#

On the VRA Prescription step you can:

• Manually adjust application rate by zone.
• Set classification thresholds — the NDVI value below which a block is "Low Vigor" and above which it's "High Vigor".
• Redistribute blocks between zones by clicking blocks on the map.
• Merge zones that turn out too similar.
• Draw exclusion zones (no-application areas — useful for waterways, headlands, sensitive corners).

Click Generate VRA Prescription when you're satisfied.

Step 6 — Product estimate & download#

The final step shows:

• Total area of the prescription (in acres or hectares, depending on your unit setting).
• Required product (total volume or mass).
• Estimated flights (rough estimate of drone-hours needed).
• Avg. rate across the prescription.

Click Download Shapefile (.zip) to grab the package. It contains the polygons and the per-zone application rate that the controller reads to drive variable-rate spraying or seeding.

Where to go from here#

• Prescription Maps reference — every option in the wizard explained.
• VRA and zones — designing better prescriptions.
• Satellite vs. Drone Imagery — choosing the right input.
• Exporting shapefiles — file format, field mapping, controller compatibility.