ANNOUNCEMENTS
The study aims to understand how black pepper productive yield fluctuates in space by looking at the 14 districts of Kerala for 26 years (1997-2023) under different climate conditions. As a significant spice in Kerala, black pepper is easily affected by both rising and falling temperatures and sudden changes in precipitation. The data used for analysis comes from the Ministry of Agriculture and Framers welfare for yield and from the Indian Meteorological Department for information on minimum temperature, maximum temperature and precipitation. Linear, quadratic, cubic and intercept-only multiple regression models were used to explore yield trends, and the most suitable models were chosen by using the Alkaline Information Criterion. To understand climate trends, the Mann-Kendall and Innovative Trend Analysis methods were applied. According to the findings, Wayand, Idukki and Palakkad have increased their pepper yield, but Kasaragod reports unchanged results. The results shows that hot and cold temperatures negatively and significantly affect the amount of black pepper produced, but the influence of rainfall is negative, but is not significant. Moreover, Random Forest and Multiple Linear Regression machine learning models were employed to evaluate the role of climatic variables and Random Forest worked more effectively. The most important factor for yield was found to be minimum temperature, with maximum temperature and precipitation coming next in importance. The study underlines how variability in climate is affecting black yields in Kerala.
Keywords: Black pepper, Climate, yield, minimum temperature, maximum temperature, precipitation.
