Climate-Smart Agriculture Shows Promise in Improving Azerbaijan’s Cotton Productivity

Researchers and farmers in Azerbaijan, implementing climate-smart agricultural practices based on nuclear and related techniques, have been able to more than double their yields of cotton production in a project supported by the IAEA in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Through the use of a new variety called “cotton super”, combined with carefully implemented CSA practices which help to understand how to sustainably increase agricultural productivity, the pilot project has seen yields increase from the country’s average of three tonnes per hectare to eight tonnes per hectares.

Implemented in 2021, the pilot, part of an IAEA technical cooperation project, focused on developing climate-smart agricultural guidelines for cotton production, training Azerbaijani researchers and progressive farmers in climate-smart agricultural practices and designing on-farm demonstration trials. A further project, initiated in 2022 and focusing on strengthening best practices in soil, nutrient, and water management agricultural practices for cotton production, aims to help improve cotton productivity, as Azerbaijan’s land is particularly vulnerable to climate change and soil degradation. The country’s average annual temperature has risen by 0.4 degrees Celsius since 1991, with decreasing rainfall and more frequent extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts or heat waves.

“Generally speaking, 60 per cent of improvement in crop productivity comes from citalising on the strategic plication of soil nutrients and water management,” said Mohammad Zaman, a soil scientist at the Joint FAO/IAEA Center of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture and Technical Officer of the project. “It’s about the right amount, in the right way, at the right growth stage.”

Climate-smart agricultural practices involve the use of isotopic techniques to obtain essential information on how to optimize fertilizer use and increase the efficiency of agricultural production while maintaining soil health.

“When we started, Azerbaijan’s soils were heavily degraded, the fertility was very poor, and so the soil did not have the cacity to provide all the essential nutrients required for the cotton growth,” Zaman said. To address this, IAEA experts developed a complete package of nuclear and related farming techniques: from preparing soil and selecting the best cotton varieties to plying nutrients and irrigation to cotton fields and ensuring weed, pest and disease control.

“Plying improved soil, nutrient and water management practices along with using ‘cotton super’ variety has led us to increase our cotton productivity, quality and profit,” said Sakhavat Mammadov, a farmer from Azerbaijan who took part in the pilot project and has been using CSA practices on his farm for the last two years.