1Space Applications Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad-380 015, (Gujarat).
2Central Potato Research Station, Jalandhar-144 003, (Punjab).
3Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla-171 001, (Himachal Pradesh).
Pre harvest potato area estimation is important to plan decision about potato storage and distribution. Jalandhar district of Punjab is a major potato-growing district of the country. An attempt was made to use satellite-based remote sensing data for district level potato crop acreage estimation. IRS ID LISS III data of December 1, 2000 were found to be most suitable for pre-harvest potato acreage estimation as it corresponds with maximum crop cover of potato. Maximum likelihood classifier was used, along with ground truth information, to delineate different land cover classes. The overall classification accuracy of 93.9 per cent was achieved. The estimated potato acreage was 16.6 thousand ha in the year 2000–01. Post classification accuracy was also checked in the field. It was observed that potato has 95 percent classification accuracy.
