Resumo

VILORIA, Jesús A; PINEDA, Corina; LOPEZ, Deyanira  e  GABALDON, Omar. Land suitability of the taguaiguay irrigation system (aragua-Venezuela)for sugarcane and banano. Agronomía Trop. [online]. 2003, vol.53, n.2, pp.189-208. ISSN 0002-192X.

Summary  The Venezuelan government has planned to use the Taguaiguay irrigation system with pretreated wastewaters. A land evaluation has been carried out in order to predict the viability of such a project on the basis of the predominant land utilization types (LUT). A visual classification of a multi-spectral SPOT image followed by a ground truth evaluation revealed that sugarcane, Saccharum officinarum and banana, Musa spp., were the prevalent LUTS. A probabilistic sampling of farms was carried out to characterize such LUTS. On the other hand, a geographical information system with soil data at 1:25 000 scale was used as a support. The land suitability obtained for the soil cartographic units was validated with 30 soil profiles revealing the need to adjust the soil map classification of eléctrical conductivity and percentage of exchangeable sodium to the LUT requirements on salinity and alkalinity. The extension planted with sugarcane (3050 ha) embraces almost the whole area that is suitable for this LUT (3367 ha), including the marginally suitable land (927 ha). On the other hand, the surface covered by banana (320 ha) is seven times smaller than the area of suitable land for this LUT (2 23 8 ha). Within the conditions set in this study, banana is more cost-effective (interna rate of return = 15,9) than sugarcane (interna rate of return = 5,8). Nevertheless, sugarcane guarantees a safer market to fanuers and is less prone to fruit robbery than banana.

Palavras-chave : Saccharum officinarum; Musa spp; Saccharum officinarum; Musa spp; land utilization type; geographical information system; soil map; land economics; land evaluation..