Assessment of Land Suitability for Irrigated and Rainfed Rapeseed Cultivation Using Fuzzy-AHP Method in Jiroft City

Identifying land potentials based on environmental resources in each region such as climate, soil and topography is the first step in developing a sustainable agricultural system. To this end, in this study, the land suitability of Jiroft city for rainfed and irrigated Rapeseed cultivation was studied using Fuzzy-AHP model in GIS. Therefore, the weight and importance of information layers such as climate (temperature, precipitation and Growth Degree Days), topography (slope & altitude), soil (EC, pH and soil type) along with access to water resources were separately obtained for irrigated and rainfed Rapeseed cultivation based on analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. Then the information layers were classified and fuzzified according to the environmental requirements of the Rapeseed crop in the GIS environment. Finally, the overlap of the layers was done by multiplying the weight obtained using the AHP method by the fuzzy layers. Finally, the land suitability map was separately prepared and classified for irrigated and rainfed Rapeseed cultivation. The results of land suitability assessment for irrigated Rapeseed cultivation showed that 14.7, 24.75, 21.61, 26.02 and 12.91% of the total area of the study area have located in very suitable, suitable, moderate suitability, low suitability and unsuitable classes, respectively. Also, the results of land suitability assessment for rainfed Rapeseed cultivation showed that 12.65, 18.46, 24.4, 22.82 and 21.76% of the total area of the study area have located in very suitable, suitable, moderate suitability, low suitability and unsuitable classes, respectively. In this classification, the factors of access to water resources for irrigated cultivation and rainfall for rainfed cultivation were the main factors limiting canola growth. These results can be useful for policy makers and farmers to design a suitable cultivation pattern.