Irrigation Water Requirement of Paddy, Wheat and Sugarcane: Irigation Scheduling and Crop Planning

One of the most important factors in agriculture is water availability. Water is provided to the crops naturally through precipitation and subsurface moisture, but when these supplies prove to be inadequate for crop use, growers must resort to irrigation. It is important to provide the proper amount of water via irrigation. Too much or too little water at the wrong stage of crop development can damage the crop and reduce yield. If a grower optimizes the use of irrigation scheduling, the amount of money that can be saved in water purchase and or well operation is significant. Crop planning is an important task on the part of the cultivator in non-irrigated land especially in dry land situations. In rainfed areas crop planning is solely dependent on the distribution pattern and amount of rainfall. The knowledge of average annual rainfall is not useful in deciding cropping pattern. With growing emphasis on profitable crop production in rainfed areas, prediction of rainfall amount expected at various levels of probability for different periods assumes an important role. This helps the farmer in judicious utilization of soil moisture by way of crop planning.