Land suitability evaluation of Razavi Khorasan province for Black cumin (Nigella sativa L.) cultivation using a combined parametric factor analysis approach

Subject Areas : Crop Production Research

Amir doostari ¹ , Ali Eftekhari ² , Ali Bagherzadeh ^{3 *} , Seyed Amir Abbas Mousavi ⁴ , Morteza Moballeghi ⁵

1 - Department of Agrotechnology, Chalous Branch, Islamic Azad University, Chalus, Iran.
2 - Assistant Professor, Department of Agriculture. Chalous Branch, Islamic Azad University, Chalus, Iran.
3 - Associate Professor, Department of Agriculture. Mashhad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad, Iran.
4 - Assistant Professor, Department of Agriculture. Chalous Branch, Islamic Azad University, Chalus, Iran.
5 - Assistant Professor, Department of Agriculture. Chalous Branch, Islamic Azad University, Chalus, Iran.

Received: 2026-03-17 Accepted : 2025-06-12 Published : 2025-06-21

Keywords: Black cumin (Nigella sativa L.), GIS, Land suitability evaluation, Parametric factor analysis, Principal component analysis ,

Abstract :

The identification of optimal zones for productive agricultural activities must simultaneously achieve three critical objectives: comprehensive conservation of water and soil resources, maintenance of crop health standards, and economic viability for producers. This study, conducted in 2024, evaluated land suitability for cultivating the medicinal plant Nigella sativa L. (black cumin) across 189,220 georeferenced points in Razavi Khorasan Province, northeastern Iran. In this study, factor analysis (FA) using principal component analysis (PCA) was employed as a multivariate statistical method to assess land suitability for black cumin cultivation in the study region. For this purpose, 17 soil and climatic factors were extracted and processed, resulting in five factors that explained over 78% of the total variance. The findings revealed that five principal factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 accounted for more than 78% of the total variance. The explained variance of these factors after varimax rotation ranged from 26.021% for the first factor to 7.111% for the fifth factor. Additionally, each factor exhibited different loadings for the variables. The land suitability map of the province indicated that 0.96% (1,127.95 km²) of the northern regions were highly suitable for black cumin cultivation, 92.43% (108,851.10 km²), covering large parts of the north, center, and some southern areas, were moderately suitable, and 6.61% (7,789.95 km²) in the western-central and southern parts were unsuitable for black cumin production. The most significant limiting factors for black cumin cultivation in Razavi Khorasan Province were climatic components and soil organic carbon.

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