During the last decade the climate started to get warmer and large area of land were affected by drought. On the other hand, the global economy started to fall and more and more people are facing poverty and starvation. In order to face these challenges it is important to develop a sustainable agriculture, able to feed the growing population. In this situation, the water management became a major issue in all human activities. This paper aim is to present a way to improve water management for irrigation, using a software application based on Penman-Monteith equation as method for estimating reference crop evapotranspiration. The application assesses the crop water requirements and offers support for designing an efficient schedule for irrigation. The computation is carried out using local climatic data and crop characteristics as inputs. This application is easy to use, but assumes that climatic data and crop characteristics are available. To reach this goal, 144 countries all over the world gathered information provided by a total of 3262 meteorological stations and developed a data-base available on-line for free. Unfortunately, Romania didn’t join this international effort and, as result, the necessary information for our country is difficult to find. This paper describes the way the application works and shows how to get the necessary input data. A basic example, for an arid area in Romania, is presented in the paper. It points out the application functions and its importance for the development of some improved practices for irrigation. Further tests should be carried out to analyze the application results in irrigation  water management and its efficiency in crop growing.

irrigation water management; reference evapotranspiration; crop water requirements

Presentation: oral