Patent ID: 7725233

Claim:
A method for controlling a harvester for harvesting a crop in a field, the method comprising: a) providing site specific information comprising ground elevation information of the field and a multi-spectral image of the field, the site specific information related to one or more attributes of the crop; b) inputting the site specific information to a processor; c) providing an attribute map of an estimated crop attribute level for the at least one crop attribute utilizing the site specific information and a plurality of samples taken at a plurality of sampling points, the providing of the attribute map comprising: determining a plurality of zones of the crop attributes; generating the sampling points within a homogenous area of each zone; excluding sample points in one or more transition areas between different zones of crop attribute levels, where the transition areas are defined by a slope, the slope determined based on a ratio between a change in a number of the zones and the distance between the zones, and analyzing the samples from the sampling points; and d) during harvesting, controlling the harvester utilizing the attribute map to steer the harvester and segregate harvested crop according to the estimated crop attribute level based on the elevation information of the field and the multi-spectral image of the field.