From climate time series to planting windows in chili (Capsicum frutescens): a SARIMA–SVM–XGBoost framework with balanced-accuracy thresholding

Abstract

This study proposes a spatio-temporal decision-support framework that integrates Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA), Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) to derive adaptive planting windows for chili (Capsicum frutescens) at the sub-district level. The framework addresses key challenges in climate-sensitive agriculture, including spatial data leakage and class imbalance, by employing Leave-One-Group-Out (LOGO) cross-validation and Balanced Accuracy–based threshold optimization. The proposed system transforms heterogeneous environmental data into actionable recommendations by combining climate forecasting, land suitability assessment, and yield prediction within a unified pipeline. Experimental results indicate that the framework effectively captures seasonal climate dynamics and produces consistent planting recommendations aligned with agronomic conditions, enabling multiple planting cycles per year. The primary contribution of this work lies in a transparent and generalizable integration of statistical and machine learning models into a practical decision-support framework. The proposed approach bridges predictive modeling and real-world agricultural decision-making and can be extended to other crops and regions for climate-adaptive agricultural planning.