3/30/2021 Hydrological context of agriculture and plant water needs - Crop water requirements

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Hydrological context of agriculture and plant water needs

Water: a vital resource>

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Crop water requirements

The principles
FAO defines crop water requirement as “the depth (or amount) of water needed to
meet the water loss of a crop through evapotranspiration (ETc = Evapotranspiration
for a specific crop)”. The crop water requirement is thus completely
dependent on the evapotranspiration of the crop.
Evapotranspiration (ET) is the sum of transpiration from leaves of plants and
evaporation from the soil surface.
Evaporation is a term that covers all processes in which liquid water is transferred as
water vapour to the atmosphere.
There are various ways to estimate ET. It can be obtained from remote sensing data.
ASTER and MODIS datasets can be used to generate detailed ET estimations. Remote
sensing methods can also be combined with equations to estimate evaporation. CGIAR
CSI (2015) developed this for its global databases on evaporation and aridity. These
databases were created by coupling remote sensing elevation data, global climate
databases and the standard evaporation equation of FAO. LET can also be
experimentally derived from lysimetric data or evaporation pan data.
Most field level crop water requirement calculations are done by estimating the ET
through equations that use local climate, crop and soil data. A number of equations
have been developed including: Penman, Penman Monteith, Priestley Taylor and

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3/30/2021 Hydrological context of agriculture and plant water needs - Crop water requirements

FAO-56 Reference Crop Equation. A full overview of the different methods to estimate
ET is given by McMahon et al.
Calculation of water requirements
For the calculation of ETc in this manual we follow the FAO-56 Reference report as
this is the standard accepted method of calculation.
This uses the Penman Monteith equation to calculate ET for a hypothetical reference
crop in a given location. This ET is called the Reference Evapotranspiration or ET0.

It uses standard parameter values: height = 0.12 m, surface resistance = 70 s m/1, and
albedo = 0.23. It estimates the daily ET0 (expressed in mm/day) based on the
following climate parameters: sunshine hours or solar radiation, maximum air
temperature, minimum air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and elevation.
The reference evapotranspiration can be calculated for different time periods
(monthly, weekly, daily and hourly). The resulting ET0 values can subsequently be
used to calculate crop water requirements for different crops. Different crops have
different levels of evapotranspiration. In order to calculate Crop Water Requirement
(ETc) of any crop a crop specific coefficient Kc is introduced (equation 1).

Method

ETp = Kc * ET0 → Equation 1

Crop coefficient values vary between crops and between the growth stages of a crop.
The figure below gives an overview of the variation of Kc values for a variety of
agricultural crops. Looking at the Kc values of the various crops, it is clear that maize
(Kc=1.2) will have a higher ETc then pineapple (Kc 0.3) under the same climatic
conditions.

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3/30/2021 Hydrological context of agriculture and plant water needs - Crop water requirements

Mid-season Kc values for a variety of agricultural crops. Source: Allen et al.

1. Inthe initial stage, due to small leaf area of the crop, evaporation occurs mainly
from the soil. The soil evaporation is a function of the wetness of the soil and thus
Kc is high when the soil is wet and low when the soil is dry.

2. Asa crop develops it can increase from 10% ground cover to 100% – full cover of
the ground by the crop. Although Kc depends on the type of crop and wetness of
the soil, it generally ranges from 0.5 for 25-40% to 0.7 for 40-60% ground cover.
3. Themid-season stage occurs from the start of full maturity to the beginning of
aging (yellow leaves). At mid-season the crop reaches its maximum Kc value.
4. The late season stage ends when the crop is harvested. The Kc value at the end of
the late season stage (Kc end) reflects crop and water management practices.

The figure below displays the typical ranges of Kc values for the four different growth
stages.

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3/30/2021 Hydrological context of agriculture and plant water needs - Crop water requirements

Typical ranges of Kc for the four growth stages. Source: Allen et al.

The ET of a crop also varies according to the water conditions in the soil
and the ability of the plant to take up water from the soil. With sufficient
water, the ET of the crop varies according to the crop coefficients in the four crop
stages. When insufficient water is available to the crop, a condition of water stress
exists. In water stress conditions, the ET of the crop will be reduced. The result is that
the crop is unable to evaporate fully, inhibiting crop growth. For irrigators it is
important to understand how low the water availability in the soil can get before
negative impacts from water stress start to occur.
Not all water in the soil is available to plants. Only soil water content in the root zone
of the plant between field capacity (FC) and the permanent wilting point (PWP) can be
used by the plant. This is referred to as the Total Available Water or TAW.
TAW is therefore the difference between the water content at field
capacity (FC) and the permanent wilting point (PWP).
TAW is crop specific due to rooting depth. Theoretically, there is water available until
wilting point but, as water content decreases in the soil a situation of water stress
occurs. Crop water uptake reduces before wilting point has been reached.
The fraction of TAW that a crop can deplete from the root zone before crop water
stress occurs is called the Readily Available Water (RAW) to the plant, and is given by
a factor p (RAW = p * TAW). Again, p is crop specific. For example, cabbage has a
larger p value than onion and can thus withstand lower soil water content before water
stress occurs.

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3/30/2021 Hydrological context of agriculture and plant water needs - Crop water requirements

Total available water in the soil (TAW) between field capacity and wilting point and
Readily available water (RAW). On the right, the development of the Ks when soil
water content is lower than RAW. Source: retrieved from Water Footprint Network
training materials.
When in water stress, crops can evaporate less. As a result, we cannot use ETc which is
crop evapotranspiration under standard conditions. Instead we use ETc, adj. crop
evapotranspiration under non-standard conditions (of water stress). To calculate the
evaporation of a crop (Etc, adj) in water stress conditions, the crop coefficient Kc in
equation 1 is multiplied by a stress coefficient Ks. The stress coefficient Ks is crop
specific. By definition, Ks is 0 at wilting point and 1 at field capacity (illustration).

Following equation 1, by knowing the ET0 and crop coefficients for the various growth
stages, we can calculate the Crop Water Requirements at different times depending on
the time resolution of the data available (next figure).

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3/30/2021 Hydrological context of agriculture and plant water needs - Crop water requirements

Crop water requirements in mm per 10 days, for an example crop during the entire
growing season (modelled using CROPWAT)

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