Abstract: Results from five years’field experiment show that the water consumption of maize with grain yield is not linearly correlated．The increase in water use is not always resulted in the increase of production and the water use efficiencv is reduced with the increase in total water use．The sensitivity to water stress at different growing periods of maize and the lower limit of soil moisture can be used as the indicators to irrigate efficiently．Based on the results．irrigation scheduling under different types of years is set up for maize.