Sustainably managed irrigated annual crops

About 95 percent of the staple crop production in Tajikistan comes from irrigated land which underlines the importance of irrigation in cultivating annual agricultural crops.

The productivity of irrigated annual crops depends largely on the provision of ecosystem services, e.g. pollination, water, and soil fertility.

Irrigated annual crops are usually intensive cultures that make for efficient use of land resources and constitute artificial ecosystems that cannot make contributions to the maintenance and improvement of biodiversity and ecosystems services. To the contrary, they mostly focus on applying huge amounts of chemical inputs and in many cases use water ineffectively.

The sustainably managed irrigated annual crops focus on reducing hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizer, and synthetic pesticides.

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