Modelling water conservation for cabbage production in sub tropical humid region using dssat cropgro model

Abstract

Water management strategies place a considerable priority on water conservation in newlineareas with limited resources of water. Scheduling water applications can help farmers to newlinemanage their water in a way that is significantly better. The scheduling of water application newlinedeals with applying water at the right time and in the right quantity in order to optimize newlineproduction and maximize water conservation. In the present study, decision making newlinesoftware DSSAT (Decision Supporting System for Agrotechnology Transfer) CROPGRO newlinemodel has been employed for cabbage crop to simulate the growth and yield under different newlinescheduling of water applications based on the maximum allowable depletion of available newlinesoil water in a sub- tropical humid region . newlineThe field experiments were conducted at the Vegetable Research Center (VRC) of newlineG. B. Pant University of Agriculture andTechnology, Pantnagar situated in Udham Singh newlineNagar District of Uttarakhand, India. The experiments were conducted on cabbage crop newline(Green Coronet) during 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. During the first trial the transplanting of newlinethe crop was done in October 2020 and harvested in the month of February, 2021and during newlinethe second trial, transplanting was done in November 2021 and harvested in February 2022. newlineThe soil profile moisture content of the experimental field was determined using the newlinegravimetric method. The irrigation treatments during cabbage growing experiments newlineconsisted of irrigation scheduling based on maximum allowable depletion (MAD) of newlineavailable soil water (ASW) criteria such as, T1 (15%) indicated that 15% maximum newlineallowable depletion (MAD) of available soil water (ASW), T2 (30%), T3 (45%), T4 (60%) newlineand T5 (75%). No water stress was maintained at the initial stages of the crop development newlinein order to allow the plants to attain healthy growth. Field experiments showed that an newlineirrigation schedule with 45% maximum allowable depletion of available soil water gives the newlinemaximum water use efficiency for cabbage crop. It was also found that the scheduling newlineirrigation for cabbage crop, 0-30 cm soil profile to be considered as most of the water was newlineto be found extracted from this layer by the plants. newline