Assessment of potential evapotranspiration and rainfall for major crops in different agroclimatic regions of Punjab

A critical assessment of water requirement and availability for major crops namely rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, cotton groundnut, soybean, sugarcane, sunflower, rapeseed & mustard, chickpea, kharif moong, kharif mash, summer moong and summer mash was made for three locations viz. Ludhiana, Bathinda and Ballowal Saunkhari representing three agroclimatic regions i.e. central plain region, western region and sub-mountainous region of Punjab. It was observed that in case of kharif crops 83 to 210 per cent of the potential evapotranspiration requirement is fulfilled by rainfall at Ballowal Saunkhari followed by 60 to 137 per cent at Ludhiana and 48 to 76 per cent at Bathinda. Whereas in case of rabi crops, 20 to 22 per cent of PET requirement of crops is fulfilled by rainfall at Ballowal Saunkhari, 19 to 21 per cent at Ludhiana and 11 to 14 per cent at Bathinda. In case of summer grown pulses, only 10 to 12 per cent of PET requirement is fulfilled by rainfall followed by 9 to 10 per cent at Ludhiana and only 7 per cent at Bathinda. Thus, summer grown crops seem to be quite exhaustive as most of their PET requirement has to be fulfilled by irrigation. The study indicates that the moisture availability conditions are more severe for western plain region as rainfall is deficit even during kharif season.