Traits preferred by birds to attack on standing wheat crop under temperate condition and its prediction through random forest model

Wheat is an important cool season cereal crop of India, production and quality get compromised due to biotic and abiotic stresses. Wheat is susceptible to a variety of diseases and insect pests, including birds. Birds attack on standing crop are not very often and extent and pattern of damage varies considerably, however, its management practices is generally not taken in to account. The bird preferred to attack wheat crops while they were in the reproductive stage, especially during milking to dough stage. The data collected over the course of a two-year field study in the Kashmir valley at Research Farm Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir) has been subjected to Random Forest model to determine whether there is a trait-specific specific preference for attack if any. Random forest (RF) model identified five major features out of 13 selected features of wheat germplasm with seventy percent accuracy for parrot birds’ preferred to attack on wheat germplasm. RF Model suggests that taller height, having long spikes and a greater number of ears, along with more biomass and grain yields, could be possible traits that bird pest target during the reproductive stage. It was inferenced that the average performance of the random forest model demonstrated with model accuracy (71%), sensitivity (0.77), kappa 0.41 and receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC-0.74) and showed good fit for classification of parrot attack on wheat germplasm.