Agriculture land suitability evaluation for wheat cultivation using geomatics for Patan District, India

Abstract

Crop land suitability for wheat crop is carried out in the Patan District of North Gujarat, India. There are many factors which affect the land suitability for wheat cultivation 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 land evaluation criteria were adopted from soil suitability manual of National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS % LUP), India and literature survey. All these factors have been assigned weightage obtained from Satty's method. The crop land evaluation results of the present study area were classified into four categories of wheat 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 wheat crop using the spatial MCDM techniques. The results indicate that distribution of wheat acreage under various suitability classes was highly suitable: 34.09%, moderately suitable: 47.37%, marginally suitable: 11.76% and unsuitable: 6.76%.