It is essential to know the water requirement of a crop which is the total quantity of water required from its sowing

time up to harvest. Naturally different crops may have different water requirements at different places of the same country, depending upon the climate, type of soil, method of cultivation, effective rain etc. The total water required for crop growth is not uniformly distributed over its entire life span which is also called crop period.

Variation in requirement of water for paddy

Irrigation water need

Variation of crop water requirement

The effect of the major climatic factors on crop water needs may be summarized as follows:
Sunshine Temperature Humidity

Wind speed

Relation between ref EVPT and Kc

Since the same crop grown in different climatic variations have different water needs, it has been accepted to evaluate the evapotranspiration rate for a standard or reference crop and find out that of all other crops in terms of this reference.
Grass has been chosen as standard reference for this purpose. The evapotranspiration rate of this standard grass is, therefore, called the reference

crop evapotranspiration and is denoted as ETO, the function of the climatic variables.

 Agricultural scientists have evaluated a factor called crop factor and

denoted it by KC, to evaluate specific crop water needs. Naturally, Kc would be different for different crops and would not be the same throughout the growth season of one type of crop. Thus, the crop evapotranspiration, denoted by ETC is to be evaluated as under:
ETc = KC * ETo

Both ETO and ETC should be in the same units and generally, mm/day

is used as a standard all over the world.

In order to simply the calculations, the factor KC has been evaluated for

4 stages of a crop growth usually denoted as

1. Initial stage 2. Crop development stage 3. Mid-season stage 4. Late season stage

Estimation of reference crop ETO

Experimental methods, using the experimentation data from evaporation pan.

Theoretical methods using empirical formulae, that take into account, climatic parameters.

Experimental method
Estimation of ET0 can be made using the formula

ETO = Kpan x Epan Where ETO is the reference crop evapotranspiration in mm/day, Kpan is a coefficient called pan coefficient and Epan is the evaporation in mm/day from the pan.

Theoretical methods
Blanney-Criddle formula: This formula gives an estimate of the mean

monthly values of ETO, which is stated as ETO = p ( 0.46 Tmean + 8.13) Where p is the mean daily percentage of annual day time hours and has been estimated according to latitude; Tmean is the mean monthly temperature in degrees Centigrade and may be taken as x (Tmax + Tmin) for a particular month. Thus using the above Equation, ETC can be evaluated for each month of the growing season, from which the total water need for the full growing season of the crop may be found out.

 Penman-Monteith method:

This method suggests that the value of ETO may be evaluated. Refer Hydrology by Jayarami reddy Refer irrigaton principles by G.L.Asawa

Application interval of irrigation water

Total water requirement in growing a crop

The water that is required to irrigate a field or plot of land growing the particular crop not only has to

satisfy the evapotranspiration needs for growing the crop, but would also include the following: Losses in the form of deep percolation while conveying water from the inlet of the field upto its last or tail end as the water gets distributed within the field
Water requirement for special operations like

land preparation, transplanting, leaching of salts, etc.

 The net irrigation requirement (NIR) is defined as the amount of irrigation water required to be delivered in the field to meet the consumptive

requirement of crop as well as other needs such as leaching, pre-sowing and nursery water requirement (if any). Thus, NIR = CIR + LR + PSR + NWR Where LR = Leaching requirement PSR = Pre-sowing requirement NWR = Nursery water requirement

 Field Irrigation Requirement (FIR) is defined as the amount of water required to meet the net irrigation requirements plus the amount of water lost as surface runoff and through deep percolation. Considering a factor a called the water application efficiency or the field application efficiency which accounts for the loss of irrigation water during its application over the field, we have FIR = NIR/ a

 The capacity of the water supply source may be termed as the gross irrigation requirement (GIR), defined as:

GIR = FIR/c In the above equation, c is the water conveyance efficiency.

Canal Irrigation

 it is desirable that a canal off taking from a river should be

able to irrigate as much an area as possible. The general layout concept can be explained when studied in respect of the off take point of the canal and the surrounding contours, is shown in Figure below

 Consider the possible alignments of canals as shown in

Figure 3. A shown in the figure, the right bank canal (generally termed RBC) and off taking from a point R on the river bank may be aligned somewhere in the region bounded by R-R, the contour line at the elevation of R or the right riverbank R-R. It is not possible to align the canal along R-R, as there would not be any slope, whereas an alignment along R-R would mean zero command area for the canal. Hence, a suitable slope of the canal that is neither too flat nor too steep would be the most appropriate. Based on the above logic, possible alignments of the right and left bank canals (RBC and LBC) have been shown in Figure 4.

 In order to demonstrate the effect of the adjacent

valley slopes on the canal layout, the right and left bank contours have been chosen in such a way that the slope of the right bank valley is flatter than that of the left bank. Hence, as may be observed from Figure 5, for the same canal slope on both the banks, the right bank canal covers a larger command area (the area between the canal and the river).

 The alignment of a canal can be done in such a way

that it is laid up to a ridge line between two valleys, which would allow a larger command area for the same canal, as shown in the figure, which shows possible contour lines between two rivers that the canal off taking from one river is able to irrigate areas between the river of the adjacent valley, too.
As far as possible, curves should be avoided in the

alignment of canals because the curves lead to disturbance of flow and a tendency to silt on the inner bend and scour the toe of the outer (concave) bend. However, if curves have to be provided; they should be as gentle as possible.

 the permissible minimum radius of curvature for a

channel curve is shorter for lined canals than unlined ones and is shorter for small cross sections than for large cross sections of canals.

Design of lined channels

The Bureau of Indian Standards code IS: 10430 -1982

Criteria for design of lined canals and guidelines for selection of type of lining (Reaffirmed in 1991) recommend trapezoidal sections with rounded corners for all channels-small or large. However, in India, the earlier practice had been to provide triangular channel sections with rounded bottom for smaller discharges. The geometric elements of these two types of channels are given below:

 Select a suitable slope for the channel banks. These

should be nearly equal to the angle of repose of the natural soil in the subgrade so that no earth pressure is exerted from behind on the lining. For example, for canals passing through sandy soil, the slope may be kept as 2H: 1V whereas canals in firm clay may have bank slopes as 1.5H: 1V canals cut in rock may have almost vertical slopes, but slopes like 0.25 to 0.75H: 1V is preferred from practical considerations. Decide on the freeboard, which is the depth allowance by which the banks are raised above the full supply level (FSL) of a canal. For channels of different discharge carrying capacities, the values recommended for freeboard are given in the following table:

 Berms or horizontal strips of land provided at canal

banks in deep cutting, have to be incorporated in the section, as shown in Fig

The berms serve as a road for inspection vehicles and also help to absorb any soil or rock that may drop from the cut-face of soil or rock of the excavations. Berm width may be kept at least 2m. If vehicles are required to move, then a width of at least 5m may be provided.

 For canal sections in filling, banks on either side have

to be provided with sufficient top width for movement of men or vehicles, as shown in Fig

Next, the cross section is to be determined for the channel section.

 Assume a safe limiting velocity of flow, depending on

the type of lining, as given below: Cement concrete lining: 2.7 m/s Brick tile lining or burnt tile lining: 1.8 m/s Boulder lining: 1.5 m/s
Assume the appropriate values of flow friction

coefficients. Since Mannings equation would usually be used for calculating the discharge in canals, values of Mannings roughness coefficient, n, from the following table (refer book)may be considered for the corresponding type of canal lining.

 The longitudinal slope (S) of the canal may vary from

reach to reach, depending upon the alignment. The slope of each reach has to be evaluated from the alignment of the canal drawn on the map of the region. For the given discharge Q, permissible velocity V, longitudinal slope S, given side slope , and Manning roughness coefficient, n, for the given canal section, find out the cross section parameters of the canal, that is, bed width (B) and depth of flow (D). Use two equations Continuity eqn Mannings Eqn