Despite the above mentioned limitations, UAVs were used to detect weed patches within annual crops (e.g. Zhang and Kovacs 2012; Pen ˜a et al. 2013; Lo ´pez-Granados et al. 2015), however, these weed maps have been rarely tested in operational situations of SSWM (e.g. Pelosi et al. 2015), i.e. converted into herbicide prescription maps and employed for patch spraying, so that an assessment of their effective economic and environmental benefits could be evaluated.