Prioritizing Effective Factors on Development of Medicinal Plants Cultivation using Analytic Hierarchy Process (Case study: North Khorasan Province, Iran)

This research conducted in order to prioritize the effective criteria on development of medicinal plants cultivation in North Khorasan Province using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Delphi methods. For this purpose, a list of effective factors offered to delphi group. Analysis of delphi process showed that among 23 offered factors 19 factors, had greater impact on development of medicinal plants cultivation. Hierarchy tree was drawn through grouping of 19 factors into four criteria including economic, promotional-educational services, cultural-social and supportive policies factors. The pair wise comparison questionnaires were then distributed among relevant researchers and experts of the province to get their opinions about the priority of criteria and sub- criteria. The questionnaires were analyzed using Expert Choice software. The result revealed that economic criterion with respective weight of 0.406 had the most impact among four criteria affecting the development of medicinal plants cultivation. The supportive policies (respective weight of 0.275), educational-extension services (respective weight of 0.193) and cultural-social factors (respective weight of 0.125) received the maximum towards the minimum priorities, respectively. The results of synthesis process showed that among the 19 factors, the guaranteed purchase and establishing of pilot fields of medicinal plants, farmers'' awareness of comparative advantage of medicinal plants, and the development of processing industries had the maximum towards minimum impacts on development of medicinal plants cultivation.