Decreasing environmental impacts of cropping systems using life cycle assessment (LCA) and multi-objective genetic algorithm Benyamin Khoshnevisan a , Elham Bolandnazar a, * , Shahaboddin Shamshirband b, d, ** , Hanifreza Motamed Shariati a, c , Nor Badrul Anuar d , Miss Laiha Mat Kiah d a Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran b Department of Computer Science, Chalous Branch, Islamic Azad University (IAU), 46615-397 Chalous, Iran c Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Shahid Razavi Branch, Science Applied and Technology University of Agricultural Organization of Mashhad, Iran d Department of Computer System and Technology, Faculty of Computer Science and InformationTechnology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia article info Article history: Received 23 June 2014 Received in revised form 18 August 2014 Accepted 18 August 2014 Available online xxx Keywords: Environmental awareness Agricultural systems Optimization Resource management Life cycle assessment abstract The environmental awareness of people has increased in recent decades, and the demand for environ- mentally friendly products has caused agro-scientists to give more attention to cleaner production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been identified as a suitable tool for assessing environmental impacts associated with a product over its life cycle. The implementation of LCA with other management tools can help LCA practitioners to evaluate agri-food systems from different viewpoints. In this study, LCA, multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA), and data envelopment analysis (DEA) were combined, and the pros and cons of their application were investigated. Three impact categories e global warming (GW), respiratory inorganics (RI) and non-renewable energy use (NRE) e were selected to be evaluated. The results revealed mean RI, GW and NRE in a case study of watermelon production of 10.3 kg PM 2.5 eq ha 1 , 9485.5 kg CO 2 eq ha 1 and 186,432 MJ primary energy ha 1 respectively. The results of LCA þ MOGA showed that a reduction of 27% in RI and 35% in GW and NRE can occur if an appropriate combination of resources is used in watermelon production. The use of LCA þ DEA revealed that if all farmers operate on the efficient frontier (suggested values) impacts in all three categories can be reduced by 8%. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Human activities play a key role in total greenhouse-gas emis- sions, of which the global food system is responsible for up to one- third of all (Gilbert, 2012). In this chain, cropping systems account for 14% of global net CO 2 emissions (Cooper et al., 2011; Mohammadi et al., 2013). The environmental awareness of both consumers and producers has sharply increased over the past decade; since consumers seek cleaner production, producers of this sector try to meet their demands. Life cycle assessment (LCA) e defined as a method in which environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of a product or service are estimated e is well-established in the literature. A multitude of studies, particularly in the field of agriculture, has been conducted using this approach to support public claims about various products or processes (Martínez-Blanco et al., 2011; Mourad et al., 2007; Romero-G amez et al., 2012; Sahle and Potting, 2013, Khoshnevisan et al., 2013b). In all of these studies, LCA has been used to investigate which step of the production system produces more environmental burdens or how environ- mental impacts of two or more production systems differ. In other words, LCA has been applied as a decision-making tool to help practitioners make the best selections among different choices (Mohammadi et al., 2013; Mohammadi et al.). Producers, and farmers in particular, need practical solutions by which they can provide better management of their production process rather than * Corresponding author. ** Corresponding author. Department of Computer System and Technology, Fac- ulty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. E-mail addresses: b_khoshnevisan@alumni.ut.ac.ir (B. Khoshnevisan), e_ bolandnazar@ut.ac.ir (E. Bolandnazar), shamshirband@um.edu.my (S. Shamshirband), hr_motamed@ut.ac.ir (H.M. Shariati). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.08.062 0959-6526/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e11 Please cite this article in press as: Khoshnevisan, B., et al., Decreasing environmental impacts of cropping systems using life cycle assessment (LCA) and multi-objective genetic algorithm, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.08.062