Crop Yield Prediction Using Hybrid Machine Learning Approach: A Case Study of Lentil ( Lens culinaris Medik.)

This paper introduces a novel hybrid approach, combining machine learning algorithms with feature selection, for efficient modelling and forecasting of complex phenomenon governed by multifactorial and nonlinear behaviours, such as crop yield. We have attempted to harness the benefits of the soft computing algorithm multivariate adaptive regression spline (MARS) for feature selection coupled with support vector regression (SVR) and artificial neural network (ANN) for efficiently mapping the relationship between the predictors and predictand variables using the MARS-ANN and MARS-SVR hybrid frameworks. The performances of the algorithms are com-pared on different fit statistics such as RMSE, MAD, MAPE, etc., using numeric agronomic traits of 518 lentil genotypes to predict grain yield. The proposed MARS-based hybrid models outperformed individual models such as MARS, SVR and ANN. This is largely due to the enhanced feature ex-traction capability of the MARS model coupled with the nonlinear adaptive learning ability of ANN and SVR. The superiority of the proposed hybrid models MARS-ANN and MARS-SVM in terms of model building and generalisation ability was demonstrated.