Sustainability assessment of wheat-sugar beet agro ecosystem (Case study: Piranshahr County)

ABSTRACT: I n order to quantifying the sustainability of wheat-sugar beet agro ecosystem, a research was conducted in the West Azerbaijan Province (Piranshahr County) in 2010. Sustainability index was determined via data of agronomic-ecological and socio-economic indicators that were collected by using questionnaires and interview. The research method was correlation-descriptive. The validity and reliability (Cranach’s alpha= 77%) of the questionnaire were tested and confirmed. Results showed that the most of the farmers (51.1%) were within the age of 25-40 year. The level of education indicated that 39% of the farmers did not have any formal education. In fact only 0.7 % and 2.2 % of farmers had the associateʹs degree and above. Most of the wheat-sugar beet cropping system farmers sampled (45.3%) had the field size ranged from 2 to 3.9 ha. Only 37.41% of farmers apply sugar beet harvester machine. The majority of the farmers (52.51%) used basin irrigation system and only 19.42 % of them used sprinkler irrigation system. finding showed that 14.38% of farmer apply more than 300 kg/ha urea that had the negative impact on environmental health. a greater percentage of farmers (75.53%) used 1-1.9 lit/ha herbicide for weed control in wheat production system. Comparison of different indicator groups showed that the ecological management of pest had the highest (73.25) value range of percentage obtained score. Based on Pearson correlation, it can be concluded that the Social- individual characteristics of farmers had the maximum positive correlation (r=0.52) with sustainability index.