Sutha Veloo
Assistant Director
Department of Agriculture
Malaysia

Abstract
GIS FOR RICE FIELD MANAGEMENT & MONITORING: AN OVERVIEW OF GEOSPATIAL SOLUTION IN MALAYSIAN AGRICULTURE

Being one of the Asian countries where rice has been the major staple food, Malaysia is also bound to the necessity of producing high yield to achieve the market requirements. Hence, increasing rice production has been part of major agriculture development strategies in Malaysia. Currently, Malaysia is focusing more on increasing the rice production sufficient to the local consumption, which also aims to reduce the necessity for importing rice. At present, Malaysia has achieved the level of self-sufficiency in rice production at about 71.7 % (2013) of the local consumption. The challenges observed for producing and maintaining high yield is when the changes occurred in rice at field and could not be detected precisely, causing the actual acreage of rice producing area is less accurate. Apart from that, it is also challenging to obtain the timely status of the rice major activities (land preparation, planting, irrigation, and harvesting) on field by executing on-site verification. Under these circumstances, any irregularities during the growth are hardly foreseen, and the effects visible merely on yield production results. Understanding the constraints and target to be achieved, Department of Agriculture has taken an initiative to establish an innovative rice mapping solution with the collaboration of Malaysia Remote Sensing Agency, where GIS and satellite imageries were used to establish rice mapping & monitoring system.