Abstract

Since all agriculture is dependent on water, it is not surprisng that centres of ancient civilization have all been close to perennial river systems. Later on, people have constructed dams, and storage reservoirs. to spread out the water supply from these rivers more uniformly and control the risk of periodical floods and inundations. Tank systems are also similar in their aim and execution. In any system of irrigation however, one has to take into account the quantity of water available and the quantity needed by different crops at different stages of their life cycle. The present paper is a review of the work done so far in India, on the water requirements of different crops, with special emphasis upon Rice, as it is the most important amongst all our food crops. The material has been culled out from various Annual Reports of different State Depart- ments of Agriculture and Schemes financed by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (1).

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