Irrigation and Crop Water Requirement - All Basic Components and Terminologies
2.1 Irrigation “Irrigation may be defined as the process of artificially supplying water to soil for raising crops”. It is a science of planning and designing an efficient, low cost, economic irrigation system tailored to fit natural conditions. It is the engineering of controlling and harnessing the various natural sources of water, by the construction of dams and reservoirs, canals and headwork’s and finally distributing the water to the irrigation fields. (Jain) “Science of Artificial Application of Water to the land, in accordance to the ‘crop requirements’, throughout the ‘crop period’ for full fledge nourishment of crop” (SK GARG, 1999) “Irrigation is the art of applying water to the land by artificial means to fulfill the water requirement of crops in the areas where rainfall is insufficient.” (Iqbal Ali, 2010) 2.2 Crop water requirement (CWR): It is the total amount of water required by the crop in a given period of time for normal growth, under field conditions.