Abstract

Tofael Osman, Aziz Chowdhury and Hannan Ramesh Chandra

Tomato is one of the most important and popular vegetables in Bangladesh. It ranks fourth in respect of production and third in respect of area in Bangladesh. It is a good source of Vitamin A and C, and it provides antioxidant elements such as lycopen which prevents cancer. Regular consumption of tomatoes can prevent short sightedness, night blindness, and other eye diseases. Tomato is also helpful in preventing joint pain problems and the respiratory disorder as well. The main purpose of this research is to identify the AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model by Box-Jenkin’s methodology that could be used to forecast the tomato production in Bangladesh. This study considered the published secondary data of yearly tomato production in Bangladesh over the period of 1971 to 2013. The best selected Box-Jenkin’s ARIMA model for forecasting the tomato productions in Bangladesh is ARIMA (0,2,1). The comparison of the original series and forecasted series shows the same manner which indicates that the fitted model is statistically suitable to forecast the tomato productions in Bangladesh, that is, the models forecast well during and beyond the estimation period