Estimation of a reliable evapotranspiration model and crop coefficient in red gram ( Cajanus cajan L .) for semi-arid environments in India

Abstract

The study aims to compute the reference evapotranspiration (ETo) by six standard methods such as Penman Monteith, Modified Penman, Hargreaves, Radiation Balance, Blaney Criddle and Pan Evaporation by using the meteorological data of the All India Coordinated Research Project on Water Management at Rahuri, India (long. 74° 18′, lat. 19° 45′). These methods were compared with lysimeter crop evapotranspiration (ETc) by statistical tools. The results revealed that the total lysimeter ETc of red gram in 132 days' growing period (sowing to harvest) was 494 mm and the ETo in the above-mentioned models were 485.2, 486.9, 544.6, 547.6, 563.9 and 485.2 mm, respectively. Out of six models, ETo of Modified Penman and Pan Evaporation methods were very much close to lysimeter ETc, but the coefficient of variation was very high, i.e., 43.05% and 23.91%, respectively. But in the Hargreaves and Blaney Criddle methods, the coefficient of variation was low, i.e., 15.97% and 12.6%, respectively. Besides low coefficient of variation, these two methods require limited meteorological parameters such as minimum and maximum temperature, radiation. For generating these parameters even at regional level, minimum expenditure is involved. The crop coefficient (Kc) estimated by Hargreaves (Kc 0.90) and the Blaney Criddle (0.87) model for the entire growing season was very much close to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 56 model, and this can be used for estimating the irrigation requirement of red gram.