Archive of SID DESERT Desert Online at http://desert.ut.ac.ir Desert 21-2 (2016) 115-131 Suitability assessment of Saffron cultivation using GIS based multi-criteria decision analysis approach; study area: East- Azerbaijan province B. Shokatia*, M.R. Asgharipoura, A. Ghanbaria, B. Feizizadehb a Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran b Department of Physical Geography, Centre for Remote Sensing and GIS, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran Received: 2 February 2016; Received in revised form: 22 March 2016; Accepted: 24 August 2016 Abstract In the way of finding economic and tolerable plant to the arid and semi-arid climatic conditions and prevent desertification in these areas, this study aims to assess Agro-climatic suitability for producing Saffron in East- Azerbaijan province based on Geographic Information System (GIS) spatial analysis technique. For this goal, several criteria including soil conditions, climatological indicators, topography situation and agro-climatology criteria were taken into account of modeling process. For this to happen, standardization process was performed on criteria and weighting process was done by using of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. GIS based Multi- criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) was employed for weighted overlapping of indicators and results were achieved based on GIS-MCDA method. Initial results indicated that East-Azerbaijan province has potential for cultivating of Saffron. Our research results indicated that about 42.7 percentage (1954416.9 ha) of this province has high suitability for Saffron producing. While, about 55.4 percentage (2537492.0 ha) of the study area has moderate suitability. In addition, about 1.8 percentage (84643.2 ha) of the study area represents low suitability. The results also indicated that, sum of sun hours and precipitation were supposed as important and limiting factors in the cultivation of this plant respectively. The founds of this research are great of importance for the purpose of regional planning in East-Azerbaijan province and also important in terms of developing methodology for precision agriculture which is one the main aspects of modern agriculture. Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process; Climate; Crocus sativus; GIS; Suitability assessment 1. Introduction them is limited to scant hectares of lands in various regions of East-Azerbaijan province, Medicinal plants are known as important Iran. resources of medicine. Reports indicated that Saffron is one of the important plants could be medicinal plants are widespread and because of cultivated in specific conditions. Saffron (Crocus their availability, about 80% of the Asian sativus L.) or Red Gold is growing in arid and populations were used these plants as primary semi-arid regions (Amirghassemi and Iranshahi, health care (Kiran Kumari et al., 2012). As food 2008). This plant belongs to Iridaceae family and drug demand projected to increase in the which is basically growing in regions with low future, associated destruction of natural annual rainfall, cold winters and hot summers. resources from this sector will also rise (Fischer Iran is leading country in saffron production with et al., 2002). Thereby cultivation and trade of 47200 ha cultivated area. Totally, about 160 tons medicinal plants are getting more attraction Saffron are producing in Iran annually (average (TITZ, 2004). However, the farming of most of yield is 3.4 kg ha-1) (Kafi, 2006). The three- branch style of saffron flowers is the most Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 936 5524693 important economic parts of the plant Fax: +98 54 31232101 (Sepaskhah and Kamgar-Haghighi, 2009) and in E-mail address: [email protected] medication is used as anti-spasmodic, www.SID.ir Archive of SID 116 Shokati et al. / Desert 21-2 (2016) 115-131 carminative, diaphoretic, all pains, light to pairwise comparison. It is believed that moderate depression (Razavi and Hosseinzadeh, suitability assessment is an important approach 2015). which leads to recognize area with high In order to improve agricultural productivity, potentiality for cultivating medicinal plants it is essential to get information about according to their physiological requirements. In productivity of each plant in geographical this way, the goal of the paper is investigating the locations. In this regards, using the capability suitability of saffron cultivation in East- Geographical Information System (GIS) is a Azerbaijan Province. novel approach which leads to spatially examine the capability of each area for cultivating 2. Materials and Methods agricultural crops (Mennecke and Lawrence, 2001). Recent progress in GIS leads to analysis 2.1. Study area and dataset whether crop can be cultivated geographical area and what would be the rate of productivity based The study area was East-Azerbaijan Province on the physical condition that an area holds (EAP1). This area is located in the north-west of (FAO, 2006). In particular, by using of this Iran, which lie between latitude 36° to 39° N and technique stakeholders, farmers, researchers, longitude 45° to 48° E (See Fig. 1). The EAP agricultural extension services, policy makers with area of 45637.35km2 includes 20 counties, and consumers could be able to use more 62 cities and 3076 villages. This area with about efficient and effective from natural resources more than 3.7 million populations is important in both in national and subnational levels (Mechan terms of housing, industrial and farming et al., 2003). In this sense, GIS- Multi-criteria practices. (Statistical center of Iran, 2015). Decision Analysis (MCDA) creates a precious Agricultural activities are the main income of collection of procedures and techniques for this study area which has been under threat due structuring decision designing and problems, to the shrinking of Urmia Lake. Based on these prioritizing and evaluating alternative decisions. condition alternative crops tolerant to the water In fact, GIS-MCDA is a process that combines deficit are in policy and priority of decision and transforms geographical data and value makers and authorizations. Based on these judgments to provide information for decision- observation results of this research could be base making (Malczewski, 2006). It is in the context of decision plans by means of identifying of the synergetic abilities of GIS and MCDA that suitable area for cultivating Saffron which is one can see the profit for advancing applied and tolerant to the water deficit as well. theoretical research on GIS-MCDA The climate of this area is arid and semi-arid (Malczewski, 2006). While GIS is generally and the annual precipitation amount is identified as an integrated and powerful tool with approximately 300 mm (Meteorological unique abilities for storing, manipulating, organization of Iran, 2015). analyzing and visualizing spatial data for In order to model the suitability of saffron decision-making, MCDA provides a valuable cultivating, the saffron plant ecological collection of algorithms and procedures for requirements criteria were considered as dataset structuring decision problems, designing, which are described in blow. The further detailed evaluating and prioritizing alternative decisions about calculating and preparing each criterion is (Boroushaki and Malczewski, 2010). The also represented in Table 4. Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) method is - Meteorological data were collected from 15 a well-known technique of the multi-criteria synoptic stations for period of 15 years. This method (Saaty and Vargas, 1991), which has dataset was used to create average precipitation, been synthesized into GIS-based suitability temperatures, sun hours, evaporation, humidity procedures (Marinoni, 2004). The AHP can help percentage, soil temperatures in depth of 5 and in recognizing and weighting selection of criteria 10 cm, maps. and expediting the process of decision-making - Digital topographical maps were used in a scale (Sener et al., 2010; Yahaya et al., 2010). The of 1:50,000 to create Digital Elevation Model AHP is a multi-attribute weighting method, (DEM) which was accordingly used to obtain utilized to derive ratio scales from paired slope and aspect maps, respectively. evaluation and to present objectivity in weight - Land use/cover maps were derived from assignment. Within this study, in order to derive Landsat ETM + satellite images with spatial the AHP weights relevant criteria for cultivating resolution of 30 m based on image processing saffron were taken into account of AHP's techniques (MANR, 2013). 1 East-Azerbaijan Province www.SID.ir Archive of SID Shokati et al. / Desert 21-2 (2016) 115-131 117 - The pH of soil map and saffron production data 푛 (Tmax + Tmin) were derived from Department of Agriculture, 퐺퐷퐷 = ∑ [ − 푇푏] (1) East-Azerbaijan Province. 2 푖=1 The Meteorological data was used to compute Here, GDD indicates the degree-day gathered for plant Growth Degree-Day (GDD) as an n days. Tmax: daily maximum temperature, Tmin: important index for cultivation of crops. daily minimum temperature, Tb: basic It has been used a thermal index of GDD, for temperature and/or physiologic zero of plant investigating the required energy value of which for saffron is 5 ◦C (Mirzabayati, 2005), n: Saffron plant for flowering. In this research, we number of days for a given time. employed the thermal index of GDD (Mohammadi et al. 2011) to evaluate the degree- day which is computed as follows: Fig. 1. Location of the case study area within Iran and East-Azerbaijan