The current non-uniform crop spatial distributions of individual cereal plants and widerspaced
row crops like maize and sugar beet can limit crop performance because of nonoptimal
resource utilization. The aim of the present study was to investigate the potential
influence of two-dimensional crop plant uniformity on the yield of oil seed rape. Voronoi
polygons (tessellations) which define the area closer to an individual than to any other
individual were used as a measure of the area available to each plant, and corrections were
included for extreme polygon shape and eccentricity of the plant location within the polygon.
These adjusted polygon areas were used to investigate the potential influence of two of the
most important determinants of crop sowing spatial uniformity: row width and longitudinal
spacing accuracy, on yield per unit area, and to ask how changes in seeding technology would
influence crop performance. The potential for increased yield with improved seeding
technology was shown. The results suggest that precision seeding can increase yield by 10 %.