CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
All plants required water in order to live, grow and produce crops. This water may be provided naturally by precipitation, by flow in water courses. It may also be provided partially or entirely by artificial means of irrigating the plant. Since the crop does not make use of all the water supplied, it becomes necessary to estimate the water volumes to be supplied and also to compensate for the losses due to evaporation and transpiration from the soil and plant respectively during time of scarcity for optimum crop production.
- ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY
The stability of any country depends on its agricultural base and the practice of growing crops all year round where climatic conditions permit the provisions of adequate food particularly in a setting measure found its storage difficulties in Nigeria. Groundnut, which is one of the cherished crop plants, is becoming increasing important in the country but unfortunately, it is a seasonal crop. It is because of this seasonally due to mainly inadequacy of moisture supply that makes its year round production a problem. This study is essentially aimed at determining the consumptive use of water by the crop to help in estimating and designing of an irrigation system which will make for optimum production of crop all the year round in Awha-Imezi of Ezeagu in Enugu State and other related areas with similar climate and soil condition in the country.
The world productions of groundnut with the major producing countries are given in table1. The major producers of groundnut are India, China, and USA. Nigeria was traditionally Africa’s largest producer and exporter of groundnut, but the production has declined considerable in recent years.
