Water Use Efficiency: Comparing Water Use Efficiency in Sugarcane and Cotton Production

Sugar requires 1500-2000 litres of water per kg, while lint cotton requires 10,000 litres of water per kg. Based on these information it is misleading to conclude that sugarcane is a more water-efficient crop. The average yield of cotton lint and sugar are 358kg/acre and 6167 kg/acre, respectively. We converted lint cotton to seed cotton (phutti) and sugar to sugarcane by using the conversion factor of 0.43 and 0.25, respectively. By using yield and per kg water requirement we estimated the per acreage water requirement for both cotton and sugarcane (Table 1). We then estimate the water ratio of sugarcane verses cotton (3.4) by dividing the water requirement of sugarcane by cotton in one acreage.