Development of Tool For Crop Suitability Analysis in Patan region of Gujarat using Geomatics

Abstract

Agriculture is major livelihood of majority of rural population in India. Farmers are enforced to produce more food resources in limited land and adverse climatic condition to cater exponentially increasing food demand. Crop-land suitability assessment can be a suitable solution for sustainable agricultural production. In this study effort has been made to carry out land suitability assessment at macro (District) and micro (farm) level. The aim of this study is to determine physical land suitability for major crops using a Spatial Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) approach for Patan District of North Gujarat, India at macro level and Badipur village of Patan district at micro level. There are many factors which affect the land suitability like land use, land cover, soil texture, slope, soil pH, soil salinity, soil sodicity, soil depth, soil drainage, groundwater quality and soil nutrients [nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potassium (K)]. The suitablity of any land for specifc crop is determined by a standerd land evaluation criteria. The land evaluation criteria is adopted from soil suitability manual of National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS-LUP), India and literature survey. All data were stored in GIS environment and the maps were generated for each and every parameter. For Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE), Pairwise Comparison Matrix known as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied and the suitable areas for major crop were identified. All these factors have been assigned weightage obtained from Satty's method (Analytic Hierarchy Process). The crop land evaluation results of the present study area were classi ed into four categories of suitability (highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable, and unsuitable) as per Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These categories were arrived at by integrating the various layers with corresponding weights in Geographical Information System (GIS) environment. This study proposes a methodology for evaluation and mapping of land suitability for macro and micro level studies. Choosing the most suitable crop to be cultivated for high agricultural production is the most difficult task for farmers. Many factors which affect the crop production are climate, soil, topograpy, moisture and nutrient availability, rooting conditions and soil toxicity. Which makes farmers task of selecting suitable crop more challenging. Therefore, an attempt has been made to develop a decision making tool for farmers to select the most appropriate crop for their land. National Bureau of Soil Survey Land Use Plan ning (NBSS-LUP) Criteria and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique is used to develop this tool. The interface engine of proposed tool has been developed using Microsoft Visual Basic.NET programming language. This tool helps in classifying crops into four suitable classes viz. highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable and not suitable according to NBSS-LUP criteria. The system covers 46 varieties of crops covering cereals, pulses, oil seeds, fiber crops, commercial crops, plantation crops, fruit crops, medicinal and aromatic plants and Spices. The developed will facilitate farmers for selecting suitable crops as per availability of local climatic condition and soil fertility.