Water requirement of crops in Khuzestan province

Abstract

One of the effective steps in use of water resources is accurate estimation of plants water requirement. Lack of accurate estimation of this amount leads to water loss and failure to achieve optimum yield, reduced potential of production, soil resources degradation by too much irrigation or lack of enough leaching and salinization of soils by irrigation less than necessary level, which would ultimately jeopardize the sustainable development of agriculture. This article uses data from more than 40 stations, meteorological, evaporative and synoptic to calculate potential evapotranspiration of reference plant, effective rainfall, the water requirement of plants of wheat, corn, sugar cane, watermelon and tomatoes and by applying the efficiencies, gross water requirement was calculated. Since the calculations were performed in the form of point and station, these findings expanded using geostatistical techniques in GIS environment at the level of Khuzestan province. Finally, it was shown that improved consumption in lower efficiencies causes higher reducing water requirement compared to higher efficiencies and consumption management in initial steps has higher yields.