DEVELOPMENT OF A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR SOIL SUITABILITY EVALUATION FOR ARABLE CROPS
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Date
2015
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Abstract
The study designed a decision support system for soil suitability evaluation for arable crops. Implementation and evaluation of the system were subsequently carried out. This was with a view to make optimal decision on crop cultivation.
Data on soil and climatic requirements for planting maize, cowpea, tomatoes and okro were collected from agricultural science expert. The data collected were used to design the knowledge model of the decision support system. The system was designed using unified modelling language (UML) and its intelligence was modelled using fuzzy inference engine. The model was implemented using Matlab. Evaluation of the system was quantitatively determined using accuracy as performance matrix and qualitatively done by comparing its output with those from experts using the mean opinion score.
The system's overall accuracy was 92.7%. The inference system to determine soil suitability for cowpea had 98.8% accuracy, 96.8% accuracy for maize, 88.2% accuracy for okro and 86.8% accuracy for tomatoes. The overall rating of the system by experts in terms of its output was 4.40/5.00 (88%), which is an indication of a good measure of reliability of the system.
The system developed is capable of providing information on soil suitability evaluation for efficient land use.
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120p
Keywords
decision support system for soil, soil suitability evaluation for arable crops, crop cultivation