Soil & Water Res., 2008, 3(10):S81-S88 | DOI: 10.17221/15/2008-SWR

Land suitability evaluation of bilverdy research station for wheat, barley, alfalfa, maize and safflower

Ali Asghar Jafarzadeh, Parisa Alamdari, Mohamed Reza Neyshabouri, Siamak Saedi
Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Tabriz, I.R. of Iran

In the present study and research work, land suitability evaluation (qualitative classification) was made for the Bilverdy research station of the Islamic Azad University in East Azarbaijan for wheat, barley, alfalfa, maize and safflower. The Simple Limitation Method (SLM), the Limitation Method regarding Number and Intensity (LMNI) and the Parametric Methods (PM) such as the square-root and the Storie methods were used. The landscape, climate and soil and characteristics that influence suitability of the land for particular crops have been combined according to the adopted methodology. Economic factors were excluded and moderate level of management was assumed. The results of different methods show that the most important limiting factors are climate, pH, organic matter (OM), gravel, salinity and sodicity, taken either alone or in combination. For safflower, the cation exchange capacity (CEC) can be added to these factors. Evaluation by the SLM and LMNI methods result in similar suitability classes, which confirms previous findings by other researchers for the same crops. However, in many cases the use of parametric methods, especially the square-root method, turned to be more realistic in distinguishing separate suitability classes. This study not only compares different methods and their results but also evaluates the suitability of the study area for particular crops. According to the square-root method, the area can be recommended as marginally suitable for cultivation of wheat, barley, alfalfa and safflower and is expected to yield about 40-65% of optimal production.

Keywords: climate; pH; gravel; organic matter; cation exchange capacity; salinity; sodicity

Published: December 31, 2008  Show citation

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Jafarzadeh AA, Alamdari P, Neyshabouri MR, Saedi S. Land suitability evaluation of bilverdy research station for wheat, barley, alfalfa, maize and safflower. Soil & Water Res. 2008;3(Special Issue 1):S81-88. doi: 10.17221/15/2008-SWR.
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