Potential benefits of altering the cassava farming practices in the water shortage regions of Vietnam

Abstract

The work was proceeded to define the suitable period for planting cassava crops in Han Thuan Bac district of Binh Thuan province, Vietnam to reduce the negative impacts of weather factors. The work was deployed applying the FAO-Aqua Crop model to calculate the tuber yield of cassava plants under the cassava farming practices (CFP) to seek the suitable planting period (SPP). The applied model was appraised through the calibration and validation procedures with the index of agreement (IA), correlation coefficient (CC) and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) varying from 0.82 to 0.88, 0.81 to 0.89 and 0.21 to 0.29, respectively. Based on the calibrated and validated procedures it can state that the proposed model is suitable for simulating the tuber yield of cassava across the study area. The simulated results indicated that the application of the CFP on Julian days from 110 to 150 for Vu Xuan crop and from 100 to 140for Vu He crop the tuber yield of cassava can improve up to 8.9 per cent and 6.0 per cent, respectively compared to the current farming practices.