Department of Agricultural Engineering, Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati, Sriniketan-731 236, Birbhum, West Bengal, India
*Corresponding Author:* Kishore Chandra Swain, Department of Agricultural Engineering, Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati, Sriniketan-731 236, Birbhum, West Bengal, India. Email: kishore.swain@visva-bharati.ac.in
Online published on 3 April, 2021.
Land suitability assessment can inform decisions on land uses suitable for maximizing crop yield while making best use, but not impairing the ability of natural resources such as soil to support development. We assessed the suitability of lentil to be produce in 300 ha land of Tarakeswar block of Hooghly district West Bengal.
Suitability criteria included eight criterion, such as: soil texture (ST), electrical conductivity (EC), organic carbon (OC), available nitrogen(N), available phosphorous (P), available potassium(K) and available zinc (Zn). We modified and used a novel set of techniques to assess suitability: Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) pairwise comparison matrixand Geographic Information System (GIS) software.
The exponential model generated by Ordinary Kriging was used to estimate the lentil land use suitability. Suitability distribution of deep layer found nearly 42% area under suitability class, i.e. S1-2 which may be used for growing the crop profitably.
AHP, GIS, Land suitability, Lentil, Soil profile
