Designing the DCWR program for calculating Daily-Crop Water Requirement

Abstract

The mathematical models are considered as indirect way to describe and simulate many physical processes that take place in soil. Designing a simulation program for describing the physical processes that occur in soil or within soil-plant-atmosphere system relies actually on numerous mathematical models. These models are basically used to define the soil processes in various circumstances. In the present research, the DCWR program (Daily-Crop Water Requirement) was designed to estimate the daily and accumulated crop water requirement. The DCWR program uses a wide range of mathematical models and methods. It has also an interactive interface easy to use, flexible and comprehensive. The DCWR program (i) calculates mainly the water quantity required for the first irrigation to reach the soil field capacity, (ii) calculates the daily water requirement, (iii) determines irrigation scheduling and plant rooting depth. For determining the first irrigation, DCWR depends practically on several soil characteristics and a lot of different models. While, for calculating the daily water requirement and irrigation scheduling, the program relies on both the daily crop coefficient and reference evapotranspiration (ET₀).