Abstract:
In the present study, an attempt has been made to use Data Envelopment Analysis
(DEA) for assessing the technical efficiency and return-to-scale for greenhouse cucumber
production in Iran. For this purpose, the data from greenhouses in Esfahan province,
during one period of plant cultivation in one year including spring plants were randomly
collected. The results indicated that total input energy, total output energy and energy
ratio were 436,824 MJ ha-1, 128,532 MJ ha-1 and 0.29, respectively. DEA can be used to
optimize the performance of any cucumber greenhouse. Based on input-oriented CRS and
VRS models of DEA, the average values of pure technical efficiency, technical efficiency
and scale efficiency were found to be 0.95, 0.83 and 0.88, respectively. Also the results
revealed that, on average, about 30.27% of the total input energy could be saved without
reducing the cucumber yield from its present level by adopting the recommendations
based on the present study.
Keywords: Cucumber, Data envelopment analysis, Technical efficiency, Yield.
