Cropping Pattern and Crop-Water Productivity Assessment in Mizawa Watershed, Blue Nile Basin, North Western Ethiopia Nurelegn Garede * , and Teklu Erkosa Departments of Agricultural Research, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia Abstract The big problem that challenges agricultural production is to produce more food from less water. Information on crop water in productivity Mizawa micro watershed was not available to conduct water conservation practices without losing productivity levels of crops. To fulfill these gaps the study was designed to assess crop water productivity of major crops. CROPWAT model version 8.0 (2009) was used to compute the crop water requirement for each crop. In order to produce cropping pattern map of the study watershed, track points of boundaries of each crop fields and other land use classes were recorded using a hand held GPS. The collected track points were transferred to ArcMap directly from GPS using DNR Garmin software and changed to shape file (polygon). The weather data obtained from the weather stations was input into the FAO CROPWAT model was used to generate the crop water requirements and crop water use (actual evapotranspiration) for each crop in the cropping seasons. Water productivity was calculated for each crop after the average productivity of each sampled crop types were determined in kg/ha from the sampled crop using excel. Crop water use of the three major crops in Mizawa watershed was 456, 317 and 304 for maize, finger millet and tef respectively. In the 2011 cropping season the average the crop water productivity of rainfall of maize, finger millet and tef which was 0.014 kg/m 3 , 0.008 kg/m 3 and 0.006 kg/m 3 in respectively. Crop water productivity results by this study fall in the lower ranges of other studies. This might be because the in the monitoring sites fertilizer application and use of improved varieties was not practiced in the monitored sites. The crops got deficit especially in the mid of the growing seasons which exists in large parts of the watershed, as well as excess water and flooding as a result of high rainfall and low effective rainfall amount was observed in the development stages of the three crops under investigation showing management practices are the key to sustain high efficiency. Keywords: Mizawa; Watershed; Crop; water; Productivity; Cropping pattern Introduction The big problem that challenges agricultural production is to produce more food from less water. Water demand already exceeded supply in many parts of the world, and as world population continues to rise, many more areas are expected to experience water scarcity. Increasing water scarcity poses a threat to food security and safe domestic water supplies. Agriculture, the sector in which a large majority of the poor makes a living, is the engine of overall economic growth and, therefore, broad-based poverty reduction. Globally, it is the major user of all water resources (green water and blue water) and it accounts for about 70% of all withdrawals worldwide. Water is the most limiting factor for agricultural development and it is the scarcest natural resource. The global contribution of rain-fed agricultural systems is around 69% and where 58% of the world food is produced. It is primarily dependent on soil moisture gained from infiltrated rainfall. The semi-arid regions in Asia and Africa are primarily dependent on rain-fed agriculture. Because of rainfall variability, accelerating land degradation, on adoption of appropriate technologies, and limited economic investments, the productivity of rain-fed systems has been quite low. Hence, the relative share and severity of poverty is often higher in rain-fed regions [1]. Currently, global discussions on water scarceness have been prevailed by considerable amount of debate on the productivity of water in view of the increasing scarcity of economically accessible water resources in many regions. Over the coming decades, global change will affect food and water security and the livelihoods of poor farmers (IFPRI, 2008). Raising water productivity in agriculture sector is the basis of demand management strategy, as this sector continues to be the major consumptive user of water in many transitional economies. The last Advances in Crop Science and Technology Garede N, et al., Adv Crop Sci Tech 2022, 10:6 Review Article Open Access Adv Crop Sci Tech, an open access journal Volume 10 • Issue 6 • 517 decades have brought the plague of extended drought to many African countries where water scarcity is reaching alarming dimensions in response to the extremely rapid population growth. In fact, the population increase is consuming the future water potential. With 99% rain fed production of main cereals such as maize, millet and sorghum, the cultivated cereal area in sub-Saharan Africa has doubled since 1960 while the yield per unit of land has been nearly stagnant for these staple crops (FAOSTAT, 2005). Many countries in Africa will not be able to afford the water demands expected from rising sectors of society such as industry. Most of the East African countries will have arrived at absolute scarcity by 2025. Five of these countries will depend on water security to support high yields or even have to import food for self-sufficiency [2]. *Corresponding author: Nurelegn Garede, Departments of Agricultural Research, Bahir Dar University, Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, Tel: 4917645673642; E-mail: nurelegn32@gmail.com Received date: 22-February-2022, Manuscript No. acst-22-49581; Editor assigned date: 25-February-2022, PreQC No. acst-22-49581; Reviewed date: 11-March-2022, QC No. acst-22-49581; Revised date: 11- May-2022, Manuscript No. acst-22-49581; Published: 19-May-2022, DOI: 10.4172/2329-8863.1000517 Citation: Garede N, Erkosa T (2022) Cropping pattern and crop-water productivity assessment in mizawa watershed, blue nile basin, north western ethiopia. Adv Crop Sci Tech 10: 517. Copyright: © 2022 Garede N, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. A d v a n c e s i n C r op S c ie n c e an d T e c h n o l o g y ISSN: 2329-8863