Tropentag, September 19 - 21, 2012 in Göttingen "Resilience of agricultural systems against crises"

Multicriteria Analysis for Land Suitability Assessment for “Gia Lun” Banana in Nam Dong District, Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam

¹Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry, Dept. of Breeding and Plant Genetics, Vietnam
²Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Dept. of Horticultural Plant Systems, Germany

Abstract

“Gia lun” banana (Musa sapientum Linn.) is one of the major fruit crop in Thua Thien Hue province, Central Vietnam. However, productivity of “Gia lun” banana was low to compare to those in other regions in Vietnam and other countries. The considerable constraints facing “Gia lun” banana development included socio-economic factors and physical conditions. This study aims to determine physical land suitability areas for the “Gia lun” banana production in Nam Dong district, Thua Thien Hue province, Vietnam by using multi-criteria evaluation, and the GIS technique to achieve optimum utilisation of the available land resources for sustainable agricultural production following framework for land evaluation FAO (1976). Eight parameters for crop suitability and five parameters for environmental suitability are considered and suitability analysis was carried out by fuzzy membership classification. In addition, this study also incorporated farmers' perceptions as well as their preferences into the decision making process by using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Geoprocessing models were used to excuse the sequence command to generate physical suitability index map for “Gia lun” banana in the study area. The physical suitability of “Gia lun” banana map showed that there was 26% of total arable area was highly suitable (1,298.34 ha); 56% (11,543.40 ha) and 38% (7,903.98 ha) was moderately and marginally suitable, respectively. The results of this study will be brought forward by local land users and administrator who need to have scientific support in order to meet the increased demand for fruit production without enhancing environmental degradation for their decision on the future land use systems in the study area.

Keywords: Geoprocessing models, GIS, land suitability assessment, multi-criteria analysis, “Gia lun” banana

Contact Address: Hang La Thi Thu, Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry, Dept. of Breeding and Plant Genetics, Hue City, Vietnam, e-mail: lathithuhanghuafyahoo.com