Water Resource Management of the Agricultural Sector in Sistan and Baluchestan Province: a Virtual Water Perspective

On average, 70 percent of globally exploited water is consumed to produce agricultural crop products. An approach to water resource management in the agricultural sector is to determine the actual amount of water that is consumed in the process of crop production. Virtual water is a measure to estimate actual water use by different crops. In this respect, the actual water use of main agricultural and horticultural crops was estimated by the CROPWAT model in Sistan and Baluchestan Province in the 2016-2017 growing season. According to the results, total water taken from the resources of the area of study was estimated at 780.582 million Cubic meter. Over 49 percent of total water use was related to date production. Average virtual water use for crop production was found to be 1437 m3 ha-1. Tomato and potato had the highest water use efficiencies of 7.850 and 7.344 kg m-3 water use, respectively.