BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.

SU MMARYAgricultural crop management decisions often require data on hydraulic properties of soils. Little information is available on hydraulic properties of clay soils that are impounded by rainwater (known as 'Haveli ' lands) every year during the monsoon season in large tracts of Madhya Pradesh in India. Estimating hydraulic properties using global pedotransfer functions (PTFs) is one possible way to collect such information. Rules in the widely used global PTF Rosetta were executed to obtain estimates of two important hydraulic properties, namely soil water retention characteristics (SWRC) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (K s ). SWRC estimates obtained with maximum input (particle size distribution, bulk density, field capacity and permanent wilting point) in Rosetta were relatively closer to the laboratory-measured data as compared with the estimates obtained with lower levels of input. Root mean square error (RMSE) of estimates ranged from 0 . 01 to 0 . 05 m 3 /m 3 . Hierarchical PTFs to predict K s from basic soil properties were derived using statistical regression and artificial neural networks. Evaluation of these indicated that neural PTFs were acceptable and hence could be used without loss of accuracy.

Accurate estimation of evapotranspiration is necessary step for better management and allocation of water resources. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) adopted the Penman Moneith method as a global standard to estimate reference crop evapotranspiration (ETo). The study aimed to estimate FAO P-M reference evapotranspiration for different district of five agro climatic zones of Madhya Pradesh state by using Aquacrop model. Daily weather data including maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation were collected for the period of 1979 to 2013 which were used as input data in Aquacrop. Several statistical parameters were used for characterizing the spatial and temporal variability of ETo. The average monthly ETo was found maximum in month of May (10.67 mm day-1) in all district of different agro climatic zones for the average period considered for the study and also for each years, whereas average minimum ETo was estimated in month of December (3.23 mm day-1) in Kymore Plateau and August (2.44 mm day-1) in Satpura Plateau. The mean daily reference evapotranspiration ranges from 4 mm day-1 to 10 mm day-1 for all districts. From the statistical analysis it was found that spatial variability of ETo lower than the temporal variability. It means the bigger differentiation of ETo in the years than in the space.

Abstract-

Abstract-