Rice and Water

Paddy is a water-sensitive crop that produces optimum yield at saturation of soil water conditions. As a result, the consumptive use (CU) of rice is calculated as a combination of evapotranspiration as an energy loss and soil percolation as a soil loss. This value is generally calculated as 10mm per day in rice fields under the Low Humic Gley (LHG) soil type in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. It is understood that the percolation from paddy fields are consistent throughout the base period of rice plant in Sri Lanka's practice of flood irrigation.