IntroductionNatural scientists and agricultural experts are aimed to provide the right methods of ecosystem design in order to promoting the health of natural systems, optimizing input consumption, enhancing production per unit input consumption, improving economic efficiency and increasing ecological sustainability. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to assess the sustainability of the agroecosystem to identify challenges and strengths. Quantification of sustainability leads to an

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... in awareness of the state of the system, which is of particular importance in making the right decisions and managing them. Emergy is a thermodynamic tool for assessing the sustainability of biological and agricultural systems. By evaluating and comparing the sustainability of production systems in this way, human activity in the ecosystem is translated into the language of thermodynamics. Over the past three decades, emergy as a powerful tool has been prove to examine the overall performance and sustainability of the different production systems. The use of emergy analysis approach in assessing the sustainability of crop systems, leads to the application of proper management to increase the sustainability of production in these systems. In this study, six production systems of wheat, onion, garlic, fennel, cumin and black seed were evaluated in the city of Helmand, Iran, using ecological and economic indicators in terms of ecological sustainability.Materials and MethodsThis study was conducted in the production systems of wheat, onion, garlic, cumin, fennel, and black seed in Hirmand County in 2019 and 2020. For this purpose, 117 farms were selected for wheat, 47 farms for onions, 32 farms for garlic, 17 farms for cumin, 12 farms for fennel and 8 farms for black seed. Information on inputs and outputs of crop systems were obtained using the following two methods: first, verbal estimates using a questionnaire, and second, field measurements and researchers' observations. In this study, free renewable and non-renewable env [...]