Agriculture
Hossein Sahabi; Fatemeh Moallem Banhangi; Ali Bagheri
Abstract
Monitoring of yield indicators, such as evaluating the trend and yield stability, can open the way for future policies and decisions in order to maintain and improve the yield of important agricultural products in Iran's agricultural systems. The aim of this study was to investigate and establish the ...
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Monitoring of yield indicators, such as evaluating the trend and yield stability, can open the way for future policies and decisions in order to maintain and improve the yield of important agricultural products in Iran's agricultural systems. The aim of this study was to investigate and establish the stability of saffron yield in selected cities of Khorasan-Razavi province during the years 1400-1401 was conducted at Torbat Heydarieh University. To achieve this objective, data regarding saffron cultivation area and yield from various cities in Khorasan-Razavi Province were gathered from available statistics published by the Ministry of Agriculture Jihad, Iran, over 34 years (1365-1399). Following data validation, five cities – namely Torbat Heydarieh, Neishabur, Kashmir, Gonabad, and Taibad – were chosen based on the availability of comprehensive statistics. Additional information was then collated through questionnaires and forms by liaising with the agricultural jihad and research centers in each city. Utilizing regression analysis, this research delved into the long-term trends of yield and cultivated area, exploring relative and absolute yield residuals and investigating coefficients of yield changes. The study unveiled that the cultivated saffron area expanded across all surveyed cities until 2007-2008. However, in the latter years of the study, specifically in cities with high average saffron yield, such as Gonabad and Torbat Heydarieh, a marked decline in cultivated area was observed. Over the past 34 years, a notable decline in saffron yield has been observed in Torbat Heydarieh, Gonabad, and Kashmar. Notably, Gonabad, which had the highest average yield over this period, experienced the most substantial decrease in yield, amounting to 0.09 kg per hectare per year. Unfortunately, the degree of yield stability in the saffron cultivation ecosystems of the studied cities was not favorable. In particular, the relative residual yield across different cities ranged from 0.01% to 159.1%, indicating significant instability in saffron cultivation ecosystems within Khorasan Razavi province. The coefficient of variation of yield trends exhibited a decline in all surveyed cities except. The average rate of change in these cities was computed to be very low at -0.005% per year, implying that the enhancement of yield stability in these regions was occurring at a notably sluggish pace.
Agriculture
Alireza Koocheki; Surur Khorramdel; fatemeh moallem banhangi
Abstract
Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a sterile geophyte plant that propagates vegetatively by means of a corm formation. During each growing season, saffron propagates by daughter corms produced from the mother corm. The daughter corms are formed above the mother corm. The plant can be maintained up to 8–10 ...
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Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a sterile geophyte plant that propagates vegetatively by means of a corm formation. During each growing season, saffron propagates by daughter corms produced from the mother corm. The daughter corms are formed above the mother corm. The plant can be maintained up to 8–10 years. In order to study the effect of corm harvesting year on daughter corm and flower yield of saffron, a four- year experiment was conducted at Research Field, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran during four growing seasons of 2015-2016, 2016-2017, 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Treatments were four corm harvesting years that considered as one, two, three and four years aged plots. Studied traits were flower numbers per m2, fresh weight of flower per m2, dried weight of stigma per m2, number of daughter corms per m2, dried weight of daughter corms, daughter corm diameter and number and weight of daughter corms in five weight groups such as <4, 4-8, 8-12, 12-16 and >16 g. Based on the results, the highest production gains in flower numbers (67.1 flowers per m2), flower fresh weight (32.31 g.m-2) and stigma dried weight (0.761 g.m-2) were observed in the second harvesting year. Also, the maximum daughter corm number and daughter corm yield were recorded for the third harvesting year with 189.5 corms.m-2 and 603.91 g.m-2, respectively. Although the progeny corm number continued to rise each year, at the third generation corm production was dominated by corms below 12 g and this suggests a need to lift the corms and replanting at the beginning of the fourth year.
Other subject about saffron
hossein sahabi; fatemeh moallem banhangi
Abstract
In order to evaluate the trend of saffron yield and study the relationship between saffron yield fluctuations and various climatic parameters, research was designed and conducted in Mashhad, Torbat Heydariyeh, Kashmar, Birjand and Qaen during 20 years (1998-2018). According to meteorological data from ...
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In order to evaluate the trend of saffron yield and study the relationship between saffron yield fluctuations and various climatic parameters, research was designed and conducted in Mashhad, Torbat Heydariyeh, Kashmar, Birjand and Qaen during 20 years (1998-2018). According to meteorological data from the last 20 years, the average rainfall decreased by 33% and the average temperature increased by 0.5 °C . On the other hand, the regression results between yield and climatic parameters indicates that the pattern of temperature rise and decreased rainfall in all studied cities was significantly in line with saffron yield declining. In this period, the study's findings also revealed that over the last 20 years, an average of 112.3 hectares of saffron cultivation have been added to the areas under cultivation of saffron and at the same time, saffron yields have dropped by an average of 0.08 kg per hectare. Climatic indicators significantly affected decreased saffron yield in Razavi and South Khorasan. The results also revealed that the average and maximum temperature were the main variables influencing the reduction of saffron yield. For instance in Torbat-e Heydarieh, the variable of average temperature predicted 42 percent of the variability of the yield and in other cities studied, the maximum temperature variable predicted between 24 and 56% of the variability of the yield. Furthermore, the results of the time series analysis of saffron yield revealed that saffron yield will show a decreasing and negative trend by 2025 in all studied cities. Up to 2025, Mashhad and Kashmar with a slope of 0.09 and 0.07 kg/ha, had the highest and lowest decreasing trends, respectively.
Agriculture
Surur Khorramdel; F. Moallem Banhangi; S.J. Davarpanah
Abstract
Saffron field from the onset of dormancy to flowering phase is free of vegetation and increased soil temperature and reduced land use efficiency are the clearest problems of sole saffron cultivation. In order to study the effect of intercropping patterns of mallow (Malva sylvetris L.) as a perennial ...
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Saffron field from the onset of dormancy to flowering phase is free of vegetation and increased soil temperature and reduced land use efficiency are the clearest problems of sole saffron cultivation. In order to study the effect of intercropping patterns of mallow (Malva sylvetris L.) as a perennial medicinal plant with saffron (Crocus sativus L.) on replacement corm growth and flower yield affected as possible cooling of corms for climate change and global warming mitigation, an experiment was conducted at Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran during three growing seasons of 2015-2016, 2016-2017 and 2017-2018. Treatments were 15, 30, 45 and 60-cm row spacings for saffron from mallow planting rows and sole saffron and mallow cultivations. Based on results in the third year, the effect of intercropping patterns with mallow was significant on yield indicators of flower and corm of saffron. In comparison between sole cultivation and intercropped saffron revealed that the highest values for flower number, dried stigma yield and yield of replacement corms were recorded for sole saffron cultivation with 81 flowers.m-2, 0.2115 g.m-2 and 26.51 g.m-2, respectively. In comparisons amongst intercropping patterns, the highest values for these criteria were related to 30-cm row spacings from mallow with 46 flowers.m-2, 0.155 g.m-2 and 13.39 g.m-2, respectively. However, corcin, picrocrocin and safranal contents were not significantly affected by intercropping patterns with mallow. Effect of intercropped saffron was significant on fresh weight of flower, dried weight of flower and branches number per plant of mallow. The maximum value for dried flower weight was observed for 60-cm row spacing with 28.89 g.m-2. The range for LER calculated with 1.01-1.77 and the maximum value was for 15-cm row spacing.
Agriculture
Soroor Khorramdel; Mahdi Nassiri Mahallati; Fatemeh Moallem Banhangi; Abdollah Mollafilabi
Abstract
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-known and accurate methodology for comparison of environmental impacts of activities including different agricultural management systems. Since the used inputs have an important role in environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, LCA have been extensively ...
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Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-known and accurate methodology for comparison of environmental impacts of activities including different agricultural management systems. Since the used inputs have an important role in environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, LCA have been extensively applied for crop species. This study was conducted to assess the environmental impact of saffron production systems based on field area (<0.5, 0.5-1 and >1 ha) in the Khorasan-e Razavi province using LCA methodology. The amounts of utilized agricultural inputs from the first year to the sixth year were collected by means of a questionnaire (13 fields from each area). In this regard, four phases, which are goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment and interpretation, were designed to assess life cycle index with ISO14044 procedure. Functional unit were considered as one kg of flower. Three main categories as impacts on environment including global warming, acidification and eutrophication (terrestrial and aquatic) were defined. Finally, an index -called environmental index (EcoX) was calculated. Cronbach's alpha was used assessing the reliability of the questionnaire. The results showed that the Cronbach's alpha was computed with α=%84. The average values for global warming, acidification and eutrophication terrestrial and aquatic categories were calculated with115.41±53.41 kg CO2 equiv. / one kg flower yield, 0.35±0.16 kg SO2 equiv./ one kg flower yield, 0.58±0.27 kg NOx equiv./ one kg flower yield and 0.20±0.09 kg PO4 equiv./ one kg flower yield, respectively. The largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in the global warming category was related to CH4. The maximum emission of pollutants in acidification, eutrophication terrestrial and eutrophication aquatic categories was related to NH3. The results revealed that, field area affected the amounts of utilized agricultural inputs and environmental impacts as flower yield. Eutrophication and climate change categories had more sensitivity and affected as intensification based on field area. Therefore, one of the appropriate approaches to mitigate and decline the environmental impacts of agricultural production is achieving higher economical yield per unit of area by increasing resource use efficiency.
Agriculture
Ffatemeh Moallem Banhangi; Parviz Rezvani Moghaddam; Ghorban Ali Asadi; Surur Khorramdel
Abstract
In order to study the effect of different amounts of corms and planting depths of corms on flower and corm yield of saffron, an experiment was conducted in a factorial layout based on complete randomized block design with three replications at the Agricultural Research Station, Faculty of Agriculture, ...
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In order to study the effect of different amounts of corms and planting depths of corms on flower and corm yield of saffron, an experiment was conducted in a factorial layout based on complete randomized block design with three replications at the Agricultural Research Station, Faculty of Agriculture, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran during 2015- 2016 growing seasons. The experimental treatments were all combination of four quantity of corms (7, 8, 9 and 10 t/ha) and three planting depth (10, 15 and 20 cm). The results showed that different quantity and planting depth of saffron corms had significant effects on the most of the studied criteria. The results revealed that flower yield, stigma dry weight, number of flowers and replacement corms per square meter increased by increasing the amount of corm by 9 t/ha and reduced planting depth by 10 cm. The maximum replacement corms yield was obtained in 8 t/ha corm treatment which was 33.25 percent higher than 7 t/ha and 15.99 percent was higher than 10 t/ha corm treatments. The maximum and minimum replacement corms yield were shown in 10 and 20 cm planting depth, respectively. The higher number of replacement corms (173 corm in m2) were obtained in 10 t/ha corms, Therefore, increasing the amount of corms from 7 to 10 t/ha will increase the number of replacement corms by 101 percent while there were no significant differences between the rests of treatments. According to the low yield of saffron in the first year, it seems increasing the amount of corm till the optimum range and reducing the planting depths of corms will increase saffron flowers yield in the first year and lead to produce bigger replacement corms for next years. Hence, optimum amount of corm and planting depths will increase farmers’ income in the first year.
