During last decade, East Azarbaijan comparing with other provinces, has been always in the first order in the case of non-oil exports. This province has high potential in production and export of agricultural crops. However, success in international trade requires determination the priorities in competitiveness among products and also more efficiently plantation of agricultural crops in the province. For this purpose we try to address the comparative advantage in production of 14 crops of province. So we apply the index of Domestic Resource Cost (DRC) and determine competitive power and priority of those crops based on DRC.
The results of calculation of DRC Index are grouped in three categories. In the first category 8 crops including irrigated wheat, irrigated barley, irrigated pea, sunflower, rain fed watermelon, irrigated cucumber, potato, tomato have DRC lower then one, So they have comparative advantage compared with other ones. In the second group there are four crops that have DRC greater than one including rain fed wheat, rain fed pea, rain fed pulses and bean. But two crops including rain fed barley and onion have DRC close to one, and belong to third group. On the approach of irrigated or rain fed production of crops, it is considered that the crops of irrigated production have had DRC lower than crops of rain fed plantation. This is because the drought and little rainfalls during 1377-78 crop year. So investing in the stable water resources and developing the model of irrigated production compared to rain fed plantation are two suggestions of this study. Based on the DRCs results, the area of first group should be developed, and the area second group should be reduced or at least the performance in the yield raised, therefore by reducing the cost of inputs, a base for recovery of DRCs should be provided.