APPLYING SEASONAL CLIMATE TRENDS TO AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN TANJUNG KARANG, MALAYSIA

Abstract

The North West Selangor Integrated Agriculture Development Agency (NWS-IADA) is the most productive agricultural part in Selangor, Malaysia. This is partly because of the inherent high fertility of the soils and the moderate variable climate. However, with increasing global concern about climate impacts, this article examines relative importance of climate influences on the paddy production rate over 28 years (1980-2008). Data collection involved compiling and analyzing climate records from auxiliary station MARDI, Tg. Karang, Malaysia (Station no. 44325, 24 m M.S.L) at the coordinates of N 03° 27’ 17" E 101° 09’ 24". The results indicate that the average rainfall recorded is 1, 765 mm which is similar to national rainfall trend. Meanwhile, the daily humidity varied between 94-96% (8.00 AM) and around 70% (2.00 PM) while the sunshine hours ranged between 2.3 to 9.5 h. A correlation analysis between the production yield and climatic data at the studied area for the year 2000-2008, showed that for precipitation; rainfall is redundant during the main season while during the off season it bears direct effect on the production yield with the R² value of -0.293 and 0.1715, respectively; Sunshine hours and temperature demonstrate their importance to production yield as suggested with their respective R² values.