Publication

Abstract : The current study focused on determining the potential geographical suitability of cassava and sweet potato, two major tropical root crops of India, using the species distribution model, MaxEnt and QGIS. The model showed excellent performance based on the AUC (area under the ROC curve) values (> 0.8) obtained during training and testing. District wise geographical suitability is analysed, and the results indicate an increase in the geographical suitability of cassava in the future with a percentage increase of 42, 41; 32, 43; and 33, 32 for 2030, 2050, and 2070, respectively, for the two representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5. The same for sweet potato is 32, 25; 27, 31; and 23, 21, respectively. The geographical suitability of rice and potato is also tested in India in the future to compare the results of cassava and sweet potato. The percentage increase in rice suitability is 17, 15; 15, 17; and 13, 11 for 2030, 2050, and 2070, respectively, for the two RCPs about its current growing locations. The increase in geographical suitability of potato is 10, 11; 10, 9; and 10, 9%, respectively. The outcome of this study shares information about the highly suitable districts for cassava, sweet potato, rice, and potato across the Indian subcontinent in the future. It can assist the decision managers in diversifying crops to highly suitable areas to ensure food security.