Ortega-Farias, S.O. Escuela de Agronomia, Facultad de Recursos Naturales, Unversidad de Talca, Casilla 747-Talca, Chile.The Penman–Monteith (P–M) model with a variable surface canopy resistance (rc) was evaluated to estimate latent heat flux (LE) or crop evapotranspiration (ET) over a furrow-irrigated tomato crop under different soil water status and atmospheric conditions. The hourly values of rc were computed as a function of environmental variables (air temperature, vapor pressure deficit, net radiation, and soil heat flux) and a normalized soil water factor (F), which varies between 0 (wilting point, θWP) and 1 (field capacity, θFC). The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO-56) method was also evaluated to calculate daily ET based on the reference evapotranspiration, crop coefficient and water stress coefficient. The performance of the P–M model and FAO-56 method were evaluated using LE values obtained from the Bowen ratio system. On a 20 min time interval, the P–M model estimated daytime variation of LE with a standard error of the estimate (SEE) of 46 Wm−2 and an absolute relative error (ARE) of 3.6%. Thus, daily performance of the P–M model was good under soil water content ranging from 118 to 83 mm (θFC and θWP being 125 and 69 mm, respectively) and LAI ranging from 1.3 to 3.0. For this validation period, the calculated values of rc and F ranged between 20 and 114 s m−1 and between 0.87 and 0.25, respectively. In this case, the P–M model was able to predict daily ET with a SEE of 0.44 mm h−1 (1.1 MJ m−2 d−1) and an ARE of 3.9%. Furthermore, the FAO-PM model computed daily ET with SEE and ARE values of 1.1 mm h−1 (2.8 MJ m−2 d−1) and 5.2%, respectively.