Impact of Climate Variability on Irrigation Water Needs and Irrigation Schedules of Maize and Cucumber in Aba, Abia State
Abstract
In an attempt to address the discrepancies in the food production and population growth rates in Nigeria, this study estimated the irrigation water requirements of maize and cucumber in Aba, Abia State. Meteorological parameters (rainfall, minimum and maximum temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, sunshine hours) were collected from NiMet Abuja for 20 years (2000 to 2020). CROPWAT version 8.0 was applied to determine the Crop ETo and irrigation schedule of maize and cucumber. The hypothesis: Impact of climate variability does not influence irrigation of maize and cucumber was tested using Pearson correlation coefficient. The result shows that during the early and late planting season of maize, the crop water used are 338.6mm and 276.6mm, effective rainfall 478.8mm and 782.8mm and the total rainfall 740.0mm and 1028.6mm. For cucumber, the water used by the crop is 334.9mm and 285.8mm, and effective rainfall 332.6mm and 663.9mm. There was no irrigation schedule for maize and cucumber during the early and late plating seasons. It shows that water requirement for maize and cucumber was enough during the seasons. The highest crop ETo and temperature was in the month of March (4.57mm/day) and January (33.7°C). The study also reveals that the impact of climate change on irrigation water need at 0.05 significant level is IR=192.811-0.089(TR). The result shows a negative slope (-0.089), which means a negative relationship between Irrigation required and total rainfall over the 20 years period. This indicates that as rainfall increases, irrigation required decreases. The study therefore, suggests that maize and cucumber should be planted in Aba all year round; since there is enough rainfall for the crop.
NAJ supports free online communication and exchange of knowledge as the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of research and development practice are made widely available. It is therefore committed to open access, which, for authors, enables the widest possible dissemination of their findings and, for readers, increases their ability to discover pertinent information. The Journal adopts and uses the CC: BY license and is open access. This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Copyright for articles published in this Journal is retained by the Journal.
