SUMMARYA field experiment was conducted at Gandhi Krishi Vignana Kendra, University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore to study the effect of irrigation regimens on the biomass accumulation, canopy development, light interception and radiation use efficiency of sunflower. The treatments includes irrigating the plants at 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 cumulative pan evaporation. The results indicated that the aboveground biomass, canopy development, radiation interception and radiation use efficiency were influenced favorably by the irrigation regimens. Irrespective of the irrigation regimen, the radiation use efficiency of sunflower increased from 15 DAS to 75 DAS and then tended to decline. The decrease in RUE after anthesis is coupled with decrease in leaf nitrogen content. In general the RUE of sunflower ranged from 0.49 g MJ-1 to 1.84 g MJ-1 at different growth stages. The light transmission within the canopy increased exponentially with plant height and the canopy extension coefficient is found to be 0.8.