Revelation of Climatically Capable Areas for SaffronCultivation in Hamedan Province

Recognition of climate and studying the ecological and physiological requirements of crops and medicinal plants are among the most important factors involving in agricultural production. As the most expensive agricultural and medicinal product in the world, saffron plays an important role in producing edible and medicinal products. Therefore, identifying the climatically capable areas for saffron cultivation according to its thermal and moisture requirements, may lead to better performance in the cultivated areas. The purpose of this study is to identify potential climatic capabilities and determine their adaptation with ecological requirements of saffron in Hamedan province. For that reason, climatic parameters such as: annual rainfall, minimum temperature during the growth cycle, average temperature, sunshine hours, freezing period, extracted from the climate database in 20 years period (1996 to 2015) and environmental parameters such as: type of soil, from the soil layer of Hamedan province extracted from Jahad Keshavarzi organization of Hamedan, slope and sea level of the area extracted from layer of 1:25000 Hamedan province topographic maps from Iran mapping organization. In this study, the effects of climatic and environmental factors mentioned above on the climatic zoning of saffron were investigated individually and in groups (overlapping information layers) using GIS and Arc Map software in a climatic spatial model using weighted overlay model and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Results of the study showed that , in terms of saffron cultivation capabilities, Hamedan Province is nearly 35% suitable, and 72.25% of its area is capable of saffron cultivation and this is limited to the southern and eastern cities of the province, including: Malayer, Nahavand, Tuiserkan, Asad abad and the eastern areas of Hamedan and Ghahavand.