Feasibility of forage sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) cultivation post-harvest of autumn cereals in semi-arid regions using fuzzy logic

Land feasibility provides the conditions for accurate decision making of each crop and its management in each area. For this purpose, Geographic Information System (GIS), Network Analysis Process (ANP) and fuzzy logic were used to evaluate the feasibility of cultivating forage sorghum after autumn grain harvest in Lorestan province. First, data minimum, maximum and average temperature, elevation, slope, pH, texture, available potassium, available phosphorus, organic matter and total nitrogen of soil were collected and after transferring them to GIS, their initial raster layers were prepared in the field of agricultural lands and sing fuzzy functions was standardized. The weight of each environmental factor was determined using ANP. Finally, by combining the weighted layers, the final land suitability layer of study area was produced and zoned into four highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable and unsuitable classes based on fuzzy logic. The results of land evaluation showed that the highest level of the study area was in the moderately suitable class (92.38%) and highly suitable and marginally suitable were included with 6.99 and 0.63% of the total studied lands, respectively. highly suitable class was observed in the center, southwest and northeast of the province, moderately suitable class in the whole province and marginally suitable class in the east of the province. The study of effective factors on forage sorghum cultivation in Lorestan province showed that the diversity of these factors in different regions reduced the potential of highly suitable class to moderately suitable and marginally suitable and minimum temperature at the end of the growing season, organic matter, total nitrogen and altitude were the most limiting.