Application of Fairly Ranking Method in Determining the Water Use Efficiency of Agricultural Products under Virtual Water Approach (Case Study: Khash)

Water scarcity is a prominent feature of arid and semi-arid regions that jeopardize agricultural production. Therefore, efficient management and use of water resources in agricultural production is essential. One way to manage and increase water use efficiency (WUE) in agriculture is to determine the amount of water used in the production process of agricultural crops, which is used to calculate the amount of water consumed in crop growth stages from the virtual water index. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to calculate the water use efficiency (WUE) of agricultural products in the Khash region under the virtual water and water footprint approach. Therefore, the water requirement was first obtained using the CROPWAT model. Then, the volume of virtual water, green water footprint, and blue water were calculated using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate water use efficiency. The results showed that 20.15% of the total water requirement of Khash agricultural crops is provided by green water and 79.85% by water. The virtual water content of crop production in this region is 853 m3/ton and the water footprint shows the total amount of water harvested for agricultural production is 133.554 million m3. The DEA results show that the average water use efficiency of crops in the Khash region is 70.8%. Corn, potato, onion, tomato, eggplant, melon and watermelon, alfalfa, forage corn, and sorghum with efficiency score 1 Component of efficient crops and dates, grapes, wheat, rice, and barley were among the inefficient products. Using the Fair Ranking Method (FRM) we found that the least efficiency was related to dates and the highest to sorghum product. Finally, it was found that products with a higher water footprint had a lower water use efficiency.