Phenology based irrigation scheduling and determination of crop coefficient of winter maize in rice fallow of eastern India

Vast rainfed rice area (12 million ha) of eastern India remains fallow after rainy season rice due to lack of appropriate water and crop management strategies inspite of having favourable natural resources, human labourers and good market prospects. In this study, a short duration crop, maize, was tried as test crop with different levels of irrigation during winter season after rainy season rice to increase productivity and cropping intensity of rainfed rice area of the region. Maize hybrid of 120 days duration was grown with phenology based irrigation scheduling viz., one irrigation at early vegetative stage, one irrigation at tassel initiation, two irrigation at tassel initiation + grain filling, three irrigation at early vegetative + tassel initiation + grain filling and four irrigation at early vegetative + tassel initiation + silking + grain-filling stages. Study revealed that one irrigation at tassel initiation stage was more beneficial than that of at early vegetative stage. Upto three irrigation, water use efficiency (WUE) was increased linearly with increased number of irrigation. With four irrigations, the yield was higher, but WUE was lower than that of three irrigations, which might be due to increased water application resulted in increase crop water use without a corresponding increase of yield for the crop with four irrigations. The crop coefficients (Kc) at different stages of the crop were derived after computing actual water use using field water balance approach. The crop coefficients of 0.42-0.47, 0.90-0.97, 1.25-1.33, and 0.58-0.61 were derived at initial, development, mid and late season, respectively with three to four irrigation. Study showed that leaf area index (LAI) was significantly correlated with Kc values with the R2 values of 0.93. When LAI exceeded 3.0, the Kc value was 1. Study revealed that the Kc values for the development and mid season stage were slightly higher to that obtained by the procedure proposed by FAO, which might be due to local advection.