Prospects for use of ratoon agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions to achieve sustainable agriculture (Iraq as a model)
Saddam H. Cheyed, Adawiya S. M. Al-Rawi, Waleed A. T. El-Fahdawi, Hamid Abdullah Salih, Noor Ayad Rasheed
Abstract: Ratoon farming is one of the most important sustainable farming methods, which can contribute to increasing cultivated areas, especially in dry, semi-dry areas. Ratoon farming means the possibility of harvesting plants more than once from a single crop, and ratoon farming can be applied to specific types of crops when the environmental conditions and varieties are available for this type of farming methods. The most important plant species to which this type of farming is applied are sugar cane, rice, cotton, sorghum and other crops. The ratoon farming method has additional advantages that increase its importance as it achieves some of the goals of sustainable agriculture, in addition to the economic return achieved from using the ratoon farming method, although the second yield achieved from ratoon farming is less than the first yield for most crops grown in this way, but the absence of the cost of the second crop (which includes land preparation, seeds, soil and other crop service operations) and the reduction of labor makes the second yield economically feasible. This type of agriculture, despite its importance, is used in a limited scope, so there is a need to increase investment in ratoon agriculture research to achieve sustainable agriculture and achieve a better economic return for some important crops that respond to ratoon agriculture within the climates of the Republic of Iraq, especially in the central and southern regions.
Keywords: agricultural methods; branching; genetic structures; second harvest
Citation: Cheyed, S. H., Al-Rawi, A. S. M., El-Fahdawi, W. A. T., Salih, H. A. & Rasheed, N. A. (2026). Prospects for use of ratoon agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions to achieve sustainable agriculture (Iraq as a model). Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 32(3), 504–512
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| Date published: 2026-06-25
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