Sugarcane Water Footprint under Rainfed and Irrigation Conditions of Some Major Production Areas

Abstract

Sugarcane production needs high volume of water to obtain satisfactory yield. Climate change and increasing of planting area resulted in increased water demand for sugarcane production. Water footprintof sugarcane was thus evaluated sothat the information could be used to improve its water use efficiency. The study was conducted by collecting information on weather data ,field management practices and yield from farmers’ fields in some major production areas, Altogether 119 samples were taken from rainfed fields and 54 samples from irrigated fields during 2015-2017. After that, the water footprint was estimated according to “The Water Footprint Assessment Manual”. Results showed that the average of sugarcane water footprint for rainfed condition was 95.1 m.³ t^-1 which could be further divided into WF_Green  and WF_Grey with 69.6 and 25.6 m³.t^-1, respectively. For irrigated condition, the water footprint showed 117.7 m³.t^-1 which could be further divided into WF_Green, WF_Blue and WF_Grey with 58.5, 37.5 and 21.7 m³.t^-1, respectively. Under the irrigated condition, the WF_Blue had increased by the average of 37.5 m³.t^-1 while sugarcane yield showed relatively
smaller increase (1.4 t.rai^-1). In order to improve the water use efficiency of sugarcane under irrigation system, the cultivars and their water requirement should be taken into consideration.