Spatially Explicit Assessment of Spring-Cultivated Potato Growth Suitability in China Based on a Process-Based Methodology

Abstract

Land suitability evaluation has been paid more and more attention by experts and scholars in recent years, especially agricultural land suitability assessment. On the one hand, methods of land suitability assessment are also various, or even very different. On the other hand, other areas of research methods are gradually applied to this, making this research more abundant and mature. In this paper, the authors applied an evaluation indicator system including the three fundamental aspects of climate for crop growth throughout the life cycle, namely temperature, precipitation and sunshine to assess the climatic growth suitability of single-cropping and double-cropping potatoes at a national level. After revision based on slope and arable land, natural suitability maps for accessing single-cropping and double-cropping potatoes of China were drawn by authors for the two varieties of classifications. In the end, the authors clearly and comprehensively analyzed the complex spatial relationship between main potato production counties and very suitable areas of China in terms of natural suitability for potatoes. The research results mainly showed the following: (1) for single-cropping potatoes, the very suitable and suitable areas occupy 9.13% and 19.05% of China’ s total territory, while very unsuitable and very bad areas represent 14.60% and 18.08% of the total. For double-cropping potatoes, the very suitable and suitable areas occupy 26.68% and 7.25% of China’ s total territory, while very unsuitable and very bad areas occupy 11.02% and 23.43% of the total. (2) After revision based on slope degree and arable land areas, the very suitable areas in terms of natural suitability occupy 2.17% and 7.35% of China’ s territory, spatially concentrated in Northeast China, east Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for single-cropping and the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain for double-cropping, respectively. (3) The authors studied the spatial relationship between the very suitable areas in terms of natural suitability for the two variety classifications and 130 main potato production counties with the evaluation indicator system. One-third of all of the counties were almost completely unsuitable for potato growth, and nearly another 27% were not good for potato cultivation. The outputs indicated that most of the main potato production counties are not located in very suitable areas in terms of natural suitability for potato growth. This article will powerfully help the relevant administrative departments and other agencies to effectively optimize the agricultural regional layout, and correctly guide the local farmers to adjust their potato cultivation to meet the needs of the market. It is also going to contribute to similar studies in other regions.