Determination of Cultivation Priority of Some Fruit Trees by ALES Program

Land suitability evaluation Based on FAO's Framework is the most widely used assessment method. One of the failures of this method is a lack of crop requirements attribute for fruit trees. The Automated Land Evaluation System (ALES), is a microcomputer program that allows to the users to build their own knowledge-based systems which they can evaluate the physical suitability of land units, based on the FAO's Framework. The main destination of this research was to apply ALES program for land use suitability determination of grape, apple and peach in Malekan region (East Azerbaijan province). For this purpose, soil morphological and analytical data were carried out for 13 lands unites based on geopedological methods. The control section data between 0 and 150 cm were calculated by “soil layer generator” to apply and run the ALES program. Climate evaluation showed that the study area is completely suitable for each three land uses. The main recognized soil limitation factors were calcium carbonate and texture in the total of study area for selected land uses. Application of ALES program revealed that 100% of study region is suitable (S1 and S2) for grape, 70% for apple and 28% for peach. Also, land use could be arranged according to their land suitability classes as follows: peach < apple < grape. This arrangement reflects the priority for agricultural uses. Finally, ALES program appears to be useful in semi-arid regions, such as East Azarbaijan, for fruits trees land suitability evaluation, and formulate sustaining agro-ecological systems.