Weather conditions associated with irrigated crops in an arid and semi arid environment

Climate variability and weather extremes are principal sources of fluctuations of annual productivity of many crops in arid and semi-arid environments. Temperature and precipitation are the major weather variables that determine the variability of crop yields. In this study, the relationship between weather descriptors and major irrigated crops yield were assessed for Khorasan province in northeast of Iran. Long term daily weather (1984-2007) and crop yield (wheat, barley, sugarbeet, cotton, potato, chickpea, alfalfa) data were analyzed with simple correlation analysis and also the iterative chi-square analysis identified relationships of low and high wheat yield years to maximum and minimum air temperatures within each region. Our results indicated that association between various crop yield and descriptors varied in different study location. As in Bojnourd located in the north of Khorasan yields of the crops studied did not correlate with temperature indicators, whereas in Birjand the relationship between temperature descriptors and crop yields were strong. Correlation between growing season precipitation and wheat, barley, chickpea and sugarbeet yields was positive while cotton yield decreased with increasing precipitation during the growing season. The results of chi-square analysis for wheat yield demonstrated that the critical time in which extreme temperature led to yield loss differed among regions. In Bojnourd, in late April to early May, and excess days (high or low yield years have more days meeting a cardinal value than normal years) with maximum temperature higher than 30 degrees C, wheat yield decreased while in Birjand, cooler maximum temperature (<= 10 degrees C) and excess days with minimum temperature particularly lower than -5 degrees C in mid-December were associated with low yielding year of wheat. Determination of critical periods when wheat is most sensitive to air temperature extremes provides important information for modifying management practices, such as adjusting planting date in order to decrease the negative impacts of these climatic extremes on yield. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.