Impact of morphological traits and irrigation levels on fresh herbage yield of sorghum x sudangrass hybrid: Modelling data mining techniques

Abstract

In this study, the effect of morphological traits on fresh herbage yield of sorghum x sudangrass hybrid plant grown in Konya province, which is the largest cereal production area in Turkey, was analyzed with some data mining methods. For this purpose, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Automatic Linear Model (ALM), Random Forest (RF) Algorithm and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline (MARS) Algorithm were used, and the prediction performances of these methods were compared. Plant height of 251.22 cm, stem diameter of 7.03 mm, fresh herbage yield of 8010.69 kg da-1, crude protein ratio of 9.09%, acid detergent fiber 33.23%, neutral detergent fiber 57.44%, acid detergent lignin 7.43%, dry matter digestibility of 63.01%, dry matter intake 2.11%, and relative feed value of 103.02 were the descriptive statistical values that were computed. Model fit statistics, including coefficient of determination (R2), adjusted R2, root of mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), standard deviation ratio (SD ratio), Mean Absolution Error (MAE) and Relative Absolution Error (RAE), were used to evaluate the prediction abilities of the fitted models. The MARS method was shown to be the best model for describing fresh herbage yield, with the lowest values of RMSE, MAPE, SD ratio, MAE and RAE (137.7, 1.488, 0.072, 109.718 and 0.017, respectively), as well as the highest R2 value (0.995) and adjusted R2 value (0.991). The experimental results show that the MARS algorithm is the most suitable model for predicting fresh herbage yield in sorghum x sudangrass hybrid, providing a good alternative to other data mining algorithms.