CROP SUITABILITY ANALYSIS FOR CEREAL CROPS OF UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA

Abstract. The crop suitability is the process of assessing the appropriateness or ability of a given type of land on the basis of growing conditions of a particular crop. The study focused on the crop suitability analysis of cereal crops for their production in Uttar Pradesh. Information about crop suitability is essential for proper management of agriculture in the study area. Remote sensing and GIS data provide a reliable information and technique to find suitable land for crops. The research was based on GIS based Multi-Criteria Decision Approach. The AMSR-2 (Advance Microwave Scanning Radiometer) soil moisture data, Carto-DEM, soil chemical and physical properties and climate data were used to identify the crop suitability in the study area. Weightage of different factors was arrived at based on input and feedback from experts. An Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) was used in ArcGIS environment to generate suitability map for the cereals crop. The suitability map has been categorised in the form of highly suitable, moderately suitable, low suitable and non-agricultural/ non-suitable region of the study area for Wheat, Rice, Sorghum, Maize and Pearl Millet/Bajra.

The overall study indicates that the study area has a huge potential of cereal crop production. Therefore, improved levels of agricultural production can be achieved by cultivating crop in highly and moderately suitable areas; and practicing diversification of marginally suitable areas to crops other than that for which it is low suitable.