production potential of several main crops in kurdistan province during last two decades and their future forecast

cultivated area, yield and production trend of wheat (triticum aestivum l.), barley (hordeum vulgare l.), potato (solanum tuberosum l.), alfalfa (medicago sativa l.) and chickpea (cicer arietinum l.) as the main crops of kurdistan province were studied during 1983-2006 using time series analysis and the situation of future were predicted for 2006-2021 period. the results showed that the cultivated area of irrigated wheat (18%), rainfed wheat (10.3%), rainfed barley (30.1%), rainfed chickpea (48.2%), potato (42.4%) and alfalfa (9.2%) will be increased; while the cultivated area of rainfed barley (31.1%) and irrigated chickpea (100%) will be reduced. the yield of irrigated wheat (36.3%), rainfed wheat (43.5%), irrigated barley (30.2%), rainfed barley (23%), irrigated chickpea (10.6%), potato (9.3%) and alfalfa (14.5%) will be increased and yield of rainfed chickpea (36.8%) will be reduced until year 1400. therefore, the amount of production of all crops except irrigated chickpea will be increased during oncoming 15 years. on the basis of results, the rate of irrigated wheat, dryland wheat, irrigated barley, dryland barley, dryland chickpea, potato, and alfalfa production will be 270, 1000, 20, 20, 30, 530, and 270 thousand tones, respectively, and the amount of irrigated chickpea production will be zero at 2021. the reason for reduction of irrigated chickpea production will reduce of cultivated area. based on results of this study the increasing of yield and cultivated area have a more important role in the increasing of cereal and alfalfa production and irrigated chickpea and potato production, respectively. thus it can be concluded that although amount of crops production in province will improve during oncoming 15 years, however, due to limitation in arable lands in that province, more efforts should be focused on improving management methods in order to increase crops yield. it is emphasized that the results of this study are the basis of past trend and the effects of some factors such as climate change and administration politics in agriculture was ignored.