Most agricultural crops need an adequate nitrogen supply to avoid minor yield and a good development of the plants. Thereby, it is mandatory for farmers to follow the regulations to avoid nitrogen leaching to water bodies and reduce negative impacts to the environment. Therefore, a fertilization to the real plant needs is essential. Consequently, the spatial estimation of the actual nitrogen status (canopy nitrogen content, CNC) of the wheat plants is of high importance for supporting variable fertilizer rates on the field.

The Copernicus program supports those goals with cost-free and frequent satellite images of Sentinel-2. Sentinel-2 offers frequent imagery with 10 - 20 m native pixel resolution and a band combination which makes it ideal for the purposes of precision agriculture. Using remote sensing based retrieval techniques the actual nitrogen status of crops can be estimated (within a certain error margin, depending on the model and its calibration). The results are visualised in a map and can help farmers to adjust the fertilizer application to the necessary amount. Information’s derived from EO satellites gathers important information to establish methods for variable rate nitrogen applications in the critical vegetation stage and reduces at the end negative impacts to the environment by over-fertilization