[01] Medagam Thirupathi Reddy, Vegetable Research Station, Dr. Y. S. R. Horticultural University, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telangana, India. [02] Hameedunnisa Begum, Vegetable Research Station, Dr. Y. S. R. Horticultural University, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telangana, India. [03] Neelam Sunil, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telangana, India. [04] Someswara Rao Pandravada, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telangana, India. [05] Natarajan Sivaraj, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

Vegetable Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa var. sabdariffa L.) is a tropical leafy vegetable sparsely under cultivation in India. The idea was to use crop modeling in identifying the most suitable areas for vegetable Roselle cultivation in India. Dataset for vegetable Roselle presence locations (n=23 points) was generated from two surveys organized by National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station, Rajendranagar in collaboration with Vegetable Research Station, Rajendranagar in parts of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states, India during 2010-11. WorldClim dataset representing current climatic conditions was downloaded from http://www.worldclim.org. Vegetable Roselle presence locations dataset and WorldClim dataset were used with Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling to generate the climate suitability map to show potential vegetable Roselle sites in India. The MaxEnt model performed better than random (random prediction AUC = 0.500) with an average AUC value of 0.993 and 0.992 for training and test data, respectively. We classified climatic zones in terms of their suitability for vegetable Roselle cultivation, based on the existence probability determined using the MaxEnt model. The results show that the MaxEnt model can be used to study the climatic suitability for vegetable Roselle cultivation. This approach can be used in other countries as well that lack precise coordinates of vegetable Roselle cultivation occurrences and generate a preliminary map of potential areas because it may be too late to wait for the precise coordinates of crop occurrences to generate a perfect climate suitability map.

Area Under Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve (AUC), Climate Suitability Map, DIVA-GIS, MaxEnt Model, Presence-Only Data, Thresholds

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