Within the domain of precision irrigation, ETc is the daily amount of moisture lost due to evaporation and transpiration. This amounts to the crop's daily water need, as I understand things. Is ETc per plant? From my own work with this calculation, the volumes appear to be too small for an entire farming area.
Evapotranspiration is the water lost through crop canopy through evaporation and transpiration ,the former through soil and the latter through plant canopy. ,which is generally considered as water requirement of crop. ETc is calculated on canopy basis ,not on per plant basis per unit area and unit time .Transpiration depends on leaf area and leaf area duration and the weather parameters like temperature and humidity and the crop season as also type of crop ..
Hi Peter Raeth ETc is usually derived from reference ET and the use of a crop coefficient, for example FAO-56. If you are focussing on a single plant then a lysimeter-based approach could be worth considering.
These responses all give good information. The work began with FAO-56. The calculation of ETo for a specific single crop under normal conditions leads to the calculation of ETc. Have carefully checked against the examples in FAO-56. Have also checked against CropWat but that tool appears to be using incoming solar radiation rather than net solar radiation. Was unable to get FAO's ETo calculator to accept greater than three-digit altitudes.
Not so much concerned over a single plant but wondering how the moisture loss indicated by ETc applies to required irrigation for a field of a given size. If ETc moisture is lost (given in mm per day) How much moisture should be added overall to the entire crop, given that the crop covers a given area?
This question arises since I am trying to at least create an open-source software framework for human-supervised automated irrigation. A more detailed project description is here: https://github.com/SoothingMist/Embeddable-Software-for-Irrigation-Control. The recent paper is here: https://academicjournals.org/journal/AJAR/article-full-text-pdf/74E637865285.
Thank you all for your discussion.
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