A Fuzzy Analysis Method for Measuring Impact of Some Climatic and Non-climatic Variables on Sorghum Production in Sudan

Abstract

The present study was conducted using the fuzzy Analysis Method to analyze the effect of total area under sorghum, GHG (Green House Gases) emissions, annual mean temperature, and annual mean rainfall on sorghum production discrepancies in Sudan for the period from 1991-2010. In the analysis, the production quantities of sorghum were designated as mother factor, while the total area under the crop (non-climatic variable) and climatic variables namely GHG emissions, mean annual temperature, and mean annual rainfall were designated as sub-factors. The relative differences between mother factor and sub-factors were calculated using the average data. The correlation degree coefficients of sub-factors to mother factor were computed as percentages using as a distinguishing parameter and the values were then ranked discerningly. The results of the analysis showed that the discrepancy in sorghum production was highly affected by area (66%), GHG emissions (55.1%), annual mean temperature (54.2%) and annual mean rainfall (53.8%). The differences between degrees of impact of different variables on production discrepancies found to be significant at p ≤ 0.001. More work considering extra production inputs, climatic variables such as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and solar radiation intensity as well as sorghum prices should be conducted using fuzzy analysis method.