Validation of Crop Coefficients and Water Requirement of Maize Crop in the Temperate Climatic Region of India

Abstract

The field study was conducted on Lysimeter by employing the soil water balance method to compute the water requirement and Crop coefficient of Maize in the temperate climatic zone of India. Non-weighing type lysimeters (drainage type) of 2 × 1.5 × 2 m was installed to compute the irrigation requirement, actual crop evapotranspiration (ETc) and actual crop coefficient of maize by water balance method. The water requirement of maize was found 410.4 mm using lysimeter data. The mean daily reference evapotranspiration (ETo) of maize ranged from 0.91 mm/day in the starting growth period to 5.29 mm/day at midseason. The peak ETo of Maize was found 6.3mm/day. The computed crop coefficient (Kc) values of Maize for diffrent crop growth stages were 0.53 for intial, 0.93 for development , 1.05 for mid-season, and 0.78 for late season .A Correlation was also established between Penman-Monteith (P-M) and four other reference Evapotranspiration methods.