Evaluation of Suitability of Al – Jazira Project Lands for Wheat Cultivation

Abstract

Al –Jazira project located in Nainawa governorate is selected to represent the supplemental irrigated cultivation system in north Iraq in order to study Land suitability for wheat cultivation. The dominant soils of the project include Inceptions with %34 and Mollisols with % 42.83 and Soil associations %22.78 of the total area. Some historical soil data have been collected from previous work done in 1980 and climatic data are collected for the last thirty years. Soils and climate (temperature, rainfall) characteristics are evaluated for wheat growing by using FAO, (1976) and SYS et al system (1993) which has been developed by the Italian institute in Florence (2012). Soil properties are weighed to depth 100 cm. The results indicate that most of the project areas show high degree of suitability for wheat growing with the suitability classes including S1 with %97.31 , S2 with % 2.3 from the total area of the project. Organic carbon is moderately limited factor for wheat. The suitability is 60 results which indicates that climate suitability for wheat (temperature, rainfall) is high suitable (S1) temperature and moderately suitable S2 for ( rain fall )

Keywords

• land suitability
• land
• soil
• wheat