Development trend and status of Pressurized Irrigation in Golestan Province, Iran

Abstract

In recent decades, specific big share of executive capabilities, capital and activities of the Iranian government have been allocating to the development of pressurized irrigation systems. Concluding these programs and specifying the development status of these systems in different locations of country can be regarded as a guideline to assign future strategies. Reliable information on irrigation methods is important for determining agricultural water demand trends. Therefore, this research, in addition to surveying of pressurized irrigation projects performed from 1990 to 2007 in Golestan province; consider development trend and status of pressurized irrigation systems in this province. Based on the result, totally 1020 pressurized irrigation projects with 22990.9 hectares area have been performed in Golestan province, which have covered only 6.64 percent of irrigated lands area or 3.2 percent of total agricultural lands area and shows the lack of pressurized irrigation development. Comparing the pressurized irrigation development trend in Golestan province with the country and their coordination shows that the most important factor in the lack of pressurized irrigation development in Golestan province is general policies on the country scale. The most important reason of very fluctuation in developing of these systems is continuous changes in policies and instability of adopted policies while, technical, social, cultural and executive factors have the least effects. Results show more than 90 percentage of sprinkler irrigation systems area allocated to cotton, soybean, wheat and barley. Also, because of petty landowner of agricultural lands in Golestan province, area average of personal farms that equipped with pressurized irrigation systems is very lesser than cooperative farms. This paper present comprehensive conclusion of sprinkler and micro irrigation projects from various aspects in Golestan province in Iran.