Crop Advisor: A Software Tool for Forecasting Paddy Yield

Abstract

The highly erratic rainfall and associated climatic parameters in India, have greater influence on the performance of cropping systems and are adversely affecting the crop yields. Forecasting of crop yields from the climatic input parameters would not only help the farmers in deciding the sale price of their produce, but it also helps the policy makers to decide the minimum support price and the buffer stock expected. Such predictions will also help the associated industries for planning the logistics of their business. Several methods of predicting and modeling crop yields have been developed in the past with varying rates of success. Statistical models often don't take into account characteristics of the weather, they are mostly are empirical in nature. In the present study a software tool named 'Crop Advisor' has been developed as a user friendly web page. This website is designed as an interactive software tool for predicting the influence of climatic parameters on the crop yields. C 4.5 algorithm is used to find out the most influencing climatic parameter on the crop yields of selected crops in selected districts of Madhya Pradesh. This software provides an indication of relative influence of different climate parameters on the crop yield, other agro-input parameters responsible for crop yield are not considered in this tool, since, application of these input parameters varies with individual fields in space and time.