Water Availability Periods for Crop Planning in Rajasthan

Abstract

The water availability periods are analysed on the basis of monthly rainfall (P), monthly potential evapotranspiration (P. E.) and monthly actual evapotranspiration (A.E.) using the modified Cocheme and Franquin (1957), and Krishnan (1971) for 14 stations of Rajasthan during the period 1901-1977. From these two techniques, it is seen that the duration of water availability periods are same in Western Rajasthan while it is more in extreme southeastern part viz, Alwar, Kota and Jhalawar since the soil moisture retention capacity is more which is utilized after cessation of the rainy period. Since crops grown in any given region are adapted to the rain fall conditions, the commen-cement of humid period (p≥ PE/2) are also analysed for individual years during the study period based on the minimum availability of water. It can be seen that the commencement of humid period starts from June 20th in the extreme south and southeastern parts (around Banswara and Jhalawar) and is delayed upto July 20th in the extreme northern parts of the state (around Ganganager).

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.003241

Pages

392 - 402

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

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