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Abstract

According to agricultural experts, saffron is one of the crops that can be a good solution to the problem of drought in a water crisis situation. A plant which uses low water consumption and high economic incomes is a good alternative to wheat, a water-consuming crop. Saffron does not need water at all in the summer, and in the fall and winter, rain will irrigate this crop and require very little water during the year. This study was conducted to select the optimum location of saffron cultivation and its comparative study in Sarab with regard to the role of important factors in locating. For this purpose, climatic criteria including (mean temperature, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, sunshine hours and precipitation), geology criteria (soil), topography criteria (elevation, slope) and socio-economic criteria (land use) were used. Due to the diversity of information, the AHP approach was used for the spatial analyzes of the criteria required for saffron cultivation, and then the layers were overlaid. To determine the potential of different areas of Sarab for saffron cultivation, after investigating the data normality, geo-statistical models were applied to the data. Then, based on AHP model, effective factors were evaluated. At the end, the final result is presented as a zoning map of suitable locations for saffron cultivation. Results revealed that the eastern and western parts of the city (46.5%) had high potential for saffron cultivation. In the northern and southern parts of Sarab, due to the high slope and consequently high erosion, and also the presence of volcanic structures in these areas, it was caused the presence of more volcanic rocks. Thus they got low potential for cultivating saffron

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