Class Notes
of
Irrigation and Drainage Engineering
(CE 654)
for
B.E. Civil III/II
Prepared by: Er. Janap Ghimire
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Chapter 2:
Irrigation Water Requirements
• Every crop requires a certain quantity of water after a certain fixed
interval, throughout its period of growth.
• If the natural rain is sufficient and timely. so as to satisfy both
these requirements, no irrigation water is required for raising that
crop.
• For example, in England, the natural rain falling regularly
throughout the year, satisfies both these requirements for
practically all the crops, and, therefore, irrigation is not
significantly needed.
• But in a tropical country like Nepal, the natural rainfall is either
insufficient or the water does not fall regularly, as required by the
crops.
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• Since the magnitude as well as the frequency of the rainfall varies
throughout a tropical country, certain crop may require irrigation in certain
part of the country, and the same crop may not require any irrigation in
some other part of the country.
• The area where irrigation is a must for agriculture is called the arid region,
while the area in which inferior crops can be grown without irrigation is
called a semi-arid region.
• The term ‘Water requirements of a crop’ means the total quantity and the
way in which a crop requires water, from the time it is sown to the time it is
harvested.
• It is very clear from the above discussion, that the water requirement, will
vary with the crop as well as with the place.
• In other words, different crops will have different water requirements, and
the same crop may have different water requirements at different places of
the same country, depending upon the variations in climates, type of soils,
methods of cultivation, and useful rainfalls, etc.
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2.1 Relation between Duty, Delta and Crop period
Crop Period:
The time period that elapses from the instant of its sowing to the instant
of its harvesting is called the crop period
Base Period:
• Base Period for a crop refers to the whole period of cultivation from
the time when irrigation water is first issued for preparation of the
ground for planting the crop, to its last watering before harvesting.
Paleo irrigation:
• Sometimes, in the initial stages before the crop is sown, the land is
very dry. This particularly happens at the time of sowing of Rabi
crops because of hot September, when the soil may be too dry to be
sown easily. In such a case, the soil is moistened with water, so as to
help in sowing of the crops. This is known as Paleo irrigation.
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Kor-watering :
• The first watering which is given to a crop. when the crop is a few
centimeters high, is called kor-watering. It is usually the maximum
single watering followed by other watering at usual intervals, as
required by drying of leaves.
• The optimum depth of kor-watering for different crops are different.
For example, the optimum depth of kor-watering for Rice is 19 cm.,
for Wheat is about 13.5 cm, and for Sugarcane is 16.5 cm.
• The kor-watering must be applied within a fixed limited period,
called Kor-period. If the plants fail to receive this water in time or in
sufficient quantity, then they do suffer a significant loss.
• The kor-period depends upon the climate. It is less for humid
climates and more for dry climates. The kor-period for rice varies
from 2 to 4 weeks, and that for wheat varies from 3 to 8 weeks.
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Duty:
• It is the relation between the area of a crop irrigated and
the quantity of irrigation water required during the
entire period of the growth of that crop.
• The term duty means the area of land that can be
irrigated with unit volume of irrigation water. Duty
represents the irrigating capacity of a unit.
• For example, if 3 cumecs of water supply is required
for a crop sown in an area of 5100 hectares, the duty of
irrigation water will be 5100/3 = 1700 hectares/cumecs,
and the discharge of 3 cumecs will be required
throughout the base period.
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Delta:
• It is the total depth of the water required by a crop during the entire
period the crop is in the field and is denoted by the symbol ∆.
• If a crop requires about 12 watering at an interval of 10 days, and a
water depth of 10 cm.
Here, Crop period = total days to required water
= No. of watering X days interval
= 12 X 10
= 120 days
For each time, 10 cm depth is required, hence, total depth of water i.e.,
delta (∆) = 12 X 10
= 120 cm = 1.2 m
If the area under the crop is A hectares, the total quantity will be 1.20 X
A = 1.2 A hectare-meters in a period of 120 days.
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H.W.- If wheat requires about 7.5 cm of water
after every 28 days, and the base period for wheat
is 140 days, find out the value of delta for wheat.
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Relation between Duty, Delta and Crop period :
D = duty in hectares/cumec
∆ = total depth of water supplied in meters
B = base period in days
• If we take a field of area D hectares, water supplied to the field
corresponding to the water depth ∆ meters will be = ∆ x D hectares-
meters = D x ∆ x104 cubic-meters. .... (1)
• Again for the same field of D hectares, one cumec of water is
required to flow during the entire base period. Hence, water supplied
to this field. V = (1 (m3/s) x (B x (24 x 60 x 60) sec) m3 .... (2)
• Equating Equations (1) and (2), we get D x ∆ x 104 = B x 24 x 60 x
60
• ∆ = B×24×60×60/(D×104) = 8.64 B/D meters.
• 1 hectare = 104 sq meters
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Example:
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2.2 Crop Water Requirements
• Crop water requirement is the water used by the crop for its
survival.
• Plants use water for photosynthesis by which it produces
carbohydrates which serves as food for the plants.
• Water is transferred into the leaves through roots of the plants, after
utilization of some amount of water for photosynthesis the rest of
the water comes at the surface of the leaves and finally it gets
vaporized into the atmosphere which is known as transpiration.
• While transpiration occurs at the same time Evaporation from the
surrounding surfaces such as: open water surfaces, bare soil or
vegetative cover occurs.
• These two contributes for the crop water requirement which is
generally measured under the name called 'Evapotranspiration' or
'Consumptive use'.
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2.2 Crop Water Requirements (Penmen’s method)
• Prediction methods for crop water requirements are used owing to
the difficulty of obtaining accurate field measurements.
• The methods often need to be applied under climatic and agronomic
conditions very different from those under which they were
originally developed.
• Testing the accuracy of the methods under a new set of conditions is
laborious, time-consuming and costly, and yet crop water
requirement data are frequently needed at short notice for project
planning.
• Estimating water requirement of crops is one of the basic needs for
crop planning on a farm and for planning of any irrigation project.
• In designating water use by crops, evaporation and transpiration are
combined into one term evapotranspiration (ET) as it is difficult to
separate these two losses in cropped fields.
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Crop water requirements are defined here as "the depth of water
needed to meet the water loss through evapotranspiration (ETcrop) of a
disease-free crop, growing in large fields under non-restricting soil
conditions including soil water and fertility and achieving full
production potential under the given growing environment.
PENMAN METHOD
• For areas where measured data on temperature, humidity, wind and
sunshine duration or radiation are available, an adaptation of the
Penman method (1948) is suggested; compared to the other
methods, it provides the most satisfactory results.
• The original Penman (1948) equation predicted evaporation losses
from an open water surface (Eo).
• The Penman equation consisted of two term's: the energy (radiation)
term and the aerodynamic (wind and humidity) term.
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PENMAN METHOD
Penman developed a theoretical formula based on principles of both
energy budget and mass-transfer approaches to compute potential
evapo-transpiration in the following form
or
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Example:
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