Most of the time there’s no need to build “transition zones”.

With 4–6 zones, just let the rate jump. The machine/controller already smooths it a bit (air seeders especially take a few seconds to catch up anyway). I’ve never seen normal zone-to-zone steps cause extra wear by themselves.

The only time it gets messy is when the map has lots of tiny “islands” and the system is constantly chasing rates. In our software you can control minimum polygon area or manually merge zones. Natural breaks type of GIS classification sometimes create too small polygons (you need to play with settings, check the tutorial). 

An example of good looking zones attached.

If you need more control/granularity, take a look into formula-based VRA maps (you can later convert it into zones). 

Field Management Zones (Productivity Zones) Creation Process decision tree.

The last advice is to take a look into standard deviation within each zone. I case it's high - you need to split the zone, adjust parameters, to have less variability within each zone. 

(Screenshot 2025-12-15 at 15.16.02 (full).png)

Screenshot 2025-12-15 at 15.16.02 (full).png (129KB - 1 downloads)