Vol. 11, Issue 3 (2022)

The unlimited overuse of available resources of water has let it to be very essential to define appropriate planning and management for irrigated agricultural land to ensure water availability and eventually food security. This is possible only after accurate estimation of water requirement of different crops and scheduled application in different farms. One of the major techniques adopted by the scientists and researchers for the above said purpose is modelling. In this research paper CROPWAT 8.0 model, developed by the Land and Water development division of Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), has been used for determination of crop evapotranspiration and yield responses to water in agro-ecological units (AEUs) of Angul district of Orrisa. The primary objective of this paper is to estimate the water demand of major crops and schedule the irrigation to enhance the water use efficiency. The results indicate that the crop water requirement of rice crop is highest followed by onion crop. The water demand for rice crop is found to be high in the month of January followed by April month. However, the Onion crop requires more water in the month of January followed by the December month.