Estimation of crop water requirement of sweet corn crop using CROPWAT 8.0 model

Most of the crops are watered through traditional methods of irrigation, which leads to wastage of water. The Crop Water Requirement (CWR) is necessary to design the irrigation system, which is the total quantity of water required for the crop from sowing to harvest.Optimization of water applied to the crop is essential as the yields of the crop are adversely affected either by excess or deficit water supply. CROPWAT 8.0 requires meteorological data as input such as maximum and minimum temperatures, wind speed, relative humidity, and sunshine hours. The soil and crop data were also given as input for calculating the CWR of sweet corn. The meteorological data of the past ten years was collected from the meteorological observatory, which is located at Agricultural College Farm, Bapatla. The average values of the above-said data were calculated for ten years (2012-2021) to estimate the crop water requirement using CROPWAT 8.0. The crop water requirement was estimated as 332 mm using the CROPWAT 8.0 model. It was found to be minimal in the initial stages (15.60 mm/dec) and found to be maximum in the middle stages (64.80 mm/dec), and again at harvesting stage, it started declining (16.70 mm/dec). CROPWAT 8.0 model gives more accurate amount of water needed for the crop, which in turn helps the crop growers to design the appropriate irrigation scheduling.