Abstract

Water is the main limiting factor for crop production. A lot of water resources have been exploited for irrigation purpose. Therefore, the objective of this study paper was to determine crop water requirement, effective rainfall and irrigation water requirement of Maize crop using CROPWAT. Today on worldwide there is a shortage of water, therefore, it is essential to adopt water saving agriculture as a counter measure as well as efficient use of irrigation water is becoming increasingly important. In growing crop, irrigation scheduling is a critical management input to ensure optimum soil moisture status for proper plant growth and development as well as for optimum yield, water use efficiency and economic benefits. In this study different data like: climate data (sunshine hour, maximum and minimum temperature, humidity and wind speed) and rainfall, soil data, crop data were used. The analyzed data indicated that crop water requirement was estimated using CROPWAT 8.0 model. A maize variety with a growing period of 125 days to maturity would require 683.9 mm depth of water, while 243.3 mm would be required as supplementary irrigation depth.