Even though rice is becoming an important source of food in Ethiopia, land suitability studies in potential areas are limited. The objective of this study was to assess the suitability of the Borkena Plain, Northeast Ethiopia for rice cultivation. The data for this study were entirely dependent on the FAO (1985) document produced by the FAO/UNDP/ETH/82/010 project. Two methods namely simple limitation method and parametric methods (Storie and Square Root) were used to identify the land suitability classes. The results showed that in the simple limitation method most areas fall under marginally suitable (S3) as a result of climate, slope or soil fertility limitations. However, results of the parametric method (Storie) almost all map units went down to N2. The application of Square Root method brought up some map units classified as N2 in the Storie Method to N1.

Keywords: Land suitability, Upland Rice, Borkena River, Storie Method, Square Root Method, Ethiopia