Evaluation of sustainability in saffron agroecosystems in Birjand and Qaen counties

This research was conducted during 2009 at a regional scale in Birjand and Qaen counties, Southern Khorasan, as an attempt to develop a sustainability index (SI) for quantifying the sustainability of saffron agroecosystem. The information of these agroecosystems, including socio-economic, agronomic and ecological indicators was collected using questionnaires and was subjected to statistical analysis. The average SI in these agroecosystems was 39.46 for whole studied region, and 37.20 and 45.09 for Birjand and Qaen, respectively. These low indices show the undesirable sustainability condition of saffron agroecosystems. In general, only 9.18 percent of all farmers achieved to a SI equal to or more than 50 and the highest score was 55.12. Among all indicators, the lowest obtained values of total for each indicator was belong to the tillage and machinery (28.31%), and water and irrigation (30.01%). The stepwise regression analysis indicated that most important factors determinaning SI for these agroecosystems were presence of livestock in farms, summer irrigation, availability of agricultural promoter, availability of insurance and loan, once plowing, availability agriculture inputs, the gross income from saffron yield, saffron farm size, other incomes, and water consumption. Resulted coefficient from the stepwise analysis for above factors respectively consist of: 3.42, 2.99, 2.54, 1.36, 1.29, 0.0049, 0.00031, 0.00000042 and -0.0005.