Trend of Crop Water Requirement at Akola (Maharashtra), India

Abstract

Climate change scenario badly affects the agriculture. The present study aimed to characterize the trend in maximum temperature and crop water requirement over a last decade at Akola station (Maharashtra State), because of changing trend in meteorological parameters. Study investigated the trends in temperature and reference evapotranspiration using various statistical parameters like mean, coefficient of variation, coefficient of skewness and coefficient of kurtosis. Monthly maximum air temperature showed slightly decreasing trend over summer season while increasing trend over monsoon and winter season. On the contrary, the monthly reference evapotranspiration showed decreasing linear trend over monsoon and winter season, while increasing trend over summer season. The study concluded that as the monthly reference evapotranspiration showed decreasing linear trend over cropping seasons (i.e. monsoon and winter), the crop water requirement at Akola station shall decrease in future.