Agro-climatic zoning of bamboo as a support for crop farming in the central-north region of the Brazilian Savannah

Abstract

Bamboo has a huge potential for several uses; however, there are many species with numerous climatic growth requirements. This makes it difficult to characterize the agro-climatic bamboo demands, in order to define areas suitable for its cultivation. This study aimed to quantify the bamboo agro-climatic requirements, as well as to define areas suitable for growth in the central-north region of the Brazilian Savannah. The agro-climatic requirements were defined from averages of the center of origin of the Bambusa vulgaris species, in southwest Asia. The climatic characterization was based on the daily mean, minimum and maximum air temperature, annual rainfall and water deficit, and consecutive months with a rainfall rate lower than 40 mm. These limits were used to define suitable, marginal and unsuitable regions. The optimal range was between 15.14 ºC and 35.33 ºC for mean air temperature, with a lower limit of 12.07 ºC and a higher limit of 38.83 ºC, respectively, for minimum and maximum air temperature. The annual minimum rainfall required was 775 mm, with a maximum annual water deficit of 1,320 mm, and a maximum of eight consecutive months with rainfall of less than 40 mm. Most of the studied region was classified as suitable (74 % of the total area), followed by marginal due to water deficit (12.9 %), unsuitable (8.9 %) and marginal due to air temperature (4.2 %).