Kuppan Mohanakrishnan, S. Ravichandran, R. Venkataraman and S. Ramesh
Abstract
Water scarcity becomes one of the major threads for the environment and economic security. The crop water requirement and water footprint estimation will help to sustainable management of water resources for the crop cultivation. The total water availability in India is approximately 1869 billion cubic meters of which, around 1123 billion cubic meters was utilized for agriculture. India is the second largest consumer of groundwater in the world, with an estimated 230 billion cubic meters of groundwater extracted annually. Agriculture is the primary user of groundwater, accounting for over 90 per cent of the total groundwater extraction. Predominantly, water-intensive crops such as rice, wheat, sugarcane and banana are grown in India, using inefficient irrigation methods leads to groundwater depletion and soil degradation. Estimation of crop water requirement is required for water intensive crops like paddy, wheat and sugarcane to know the optimum level of water needs to be irrigated during the cropping period. Since, Viluppuram is one of the major agricultural districts, mainly depends on groundwater, it contributes a significant share on the stateâs rice, groundnut and sugarcane crops. Hence, an attempt was made to study the crop water requirement and water footprint of sugarcane, paddy and groundnut in Viluppuram district of Tamil Nadu.