Vol. 17 No. 2
Modeling crop water requirement using weather model under elevated temperature scenarios for scaling up quality of weather based agro advisory
Author(s): B. PAREEK, R. SINGH RANA, S. MANUJA, S. K. SANDAL, V. KALIA AND K.K. SINGH
Abstract: The rise in water demand for agriculture, industry, domestic and environmental requires sagacious planning and use of this limited resource, particularly in the face of changed climatic scenarios. Majority of the freshwater is being used for agriculture purpose. Precision crop water management requires reliable estimation of crop water requirement (Evapo-transpiration). Elevated temperature in changing climatic scenario has made water scarcity as the most prominent problem and has necessitated the assessment of future crop water requirement. The present study focused on the estimation of ET0 (Reference Evapo-transpiration), effective rainfall and crop water requirement (ETc) determined for all districts of Himachal Pradesh, in North Western Himalayas. The normal weather data of all districts of Himachal Pradesh representing sub-tropical to wet and dry temperate climatic conditions were used to estimate the ET0 using Modified Penman Method. The crop water requirements for all months were worked using the average seasonal Kc value to the tune of 0.80. The projected increase of crop water requirement with 1oC, 2oC and 3oC rise in maximum and minimum temperature clearly portrayed that water requirement estimated was higher by 2-7% compared to normal weather conditions during rabi season than kharif in districts having sub-tropical to sub temperate climates. However, districts having temperate to wet/dry temperate climates observed higher crop water requirement during kharif season as crops are grown during kharif season only in these districts. ET0 also followed similar trends in all districts.
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