MODELING AND SIMULATION OF YAM CROP YIELD FOR TEN YEARS IN KEFFI,NASARAWA STATE,NIGERIA


Ibrahim Sufiyan, Muhammad Alkali, H.B Sylvanus

DOI: 10.26480/bda.01.2025.06.09

ABSTRACT
Yam tuber is a staple crop widely grown across Nasarawa State, primarily due to favorable climate and soil factors; in this study, the water requirement (rainfall) for yam cultivation was simulated, with the total landmass area calculated to determine yam crop simulation, and Minitab software used for Rainfall Trend Analysis (RTA); mean monthly rainfall was estimated by dividing the accumulated rainfall for a month by the total number of rainy days in that month, using the mean equation, and summed over 120 months (10 years), revealing the highest recorded rainfall of 2650mm in 2020 and the lowest of 1800mm in 2011, with a 10-year rainfall trend showing a Pearson correlation of 0.77, while the Pearson Matrix correlation indicated a high value of 0.92, demonstrated in the rainfall simulation, which was sequentially arranged in a linear direction following the rainfall trend pattern, and the average cultivated land area increased geometrically from 1.5 hectares in a linear trend simulation, with the Pearson correlation highlighting high yam yield in Keffi, peaking at 0.93 in 2018