Water Management in Horticultural Crops

Crop stages and critical period

• When the crop plants are young and delicate, they are not able to stand and demand a liberal supply of water. Again, with the start of grand growth period, crop puts up a faster rate of vegetative growth and transpiration and bio-chemical activities in plants occur at higher rate. This leads to tremendous increase in water need of the crop and the supply of water should be adequate to maintain the normal rate of active growth and evapo-transpiration. Water stress at the sensitive stages causes a serious retardation in growth process that ultimately depresses the yield. The sensitive stages differ from one crop to the others. Water stress at these stages causes lower branching, tuber bulking, inadequate flowering, flower drops, poor setting of fruits and serious fruit drops.
• It is true that crops require adequate water supply through out their life cycle for best growth and yield. Only in the later stages of crop maturity, water supply is reduced or stopped to obtain uniform and quicker crop maturity. Crops may be allowed to stand water stress to some extent during certain periods of life excepting at the critical stages to save some water under situations of water scarcity.