Locating Potential Areas for the Cultivation and Development of Tagasaste (Chamaecytisus palmensis) in Yazd Province, Using the Geographical Information System and Analytic Hierarchy

In arid and semi-arid regions of Iran, agriculture and animal husbandry activities have always been next to each other; where providing the livestock fodder has been found as one of the main concerns of farmers. Therefore, it seems necessary to introduce suitable fodder plants to be cultivated in these regions. First of all, the ecological needs of tagasaste species were determined based on existing liteartures. For this purpose, four factors of climate, land use, topography and irrigation water were initially mentioned as the main criterias.Based on the results of the AHP analysis, the climate (0.507) and irrigation water (0.312) criterias have had the highest relative weights for tagasaste cultivation in Yazd province.Among the investigated sub-criterias, the number of freezing days per year (0.212), the annual average minimum absolute temperature (0.158), the salinity of irrigation water (0.130) and the annual average maximum absolute temperature (0.072), were found as the main important sub-criterias for the cultivation of tagasaste in Yazd province, respectively.