Assessing spring maize responses to irrigation and nitrogen regimes in north-west India using CERES-Maize model

Rajbir Kaur and Vk Arora

Agricultural Water Management, 2018, vol. 209, issue C, 171-177

Abstract: Inadequate availability of fresh water and rising cost of fertilizers warrant their judicious use in agriculture. In intensively-cropped Punjab state of north-west India, alarming decline in groundwater resources pose a challenge to spring maize that otherwise has high profitability. This study is an assessment of water use and productivity responses of spring maize to irrigation and nitrogen regimes in a subtropical environment using CERES-Maize model. Database was generated from a field study on maize planted in second half of February with combinations of two irrigation regimes viz., irrigation water to pan evaporation ratio of 1.0 (I1.0) and 0.5 (I0.5), and four N rates viz., 0, 50, 100 and 150 kg ha−1 on a sandy loam soil. Irrigation and N had significant effects on grain yield, water use and N uptake. Performance of the model was reasonable with normalized root mean square of deviations between simulated and measured values less than 20% for harvest-time biomass, grain yield and water use; and slightly greater variance (30%) for grain N uptake. Scenario analysis showed that ET-based water productivity (WPET) was greater in January 31 than February 14 planted maize crop. The WPET was greater with I0.5 than with I1.0 suggesting that increase in yield was less than proportional increase in ET. The WPET responses to N with increase in irrigation were greater at lower than at higher initial soil water.

Keywords: Modeling; Maize; Water productivity; Irrigation; Fertilizer nitrogen; Planting time (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377418303664
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:209:y:2018:i:c:p:171-177

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2018.07.022

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().