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Ensuring accurate estimation of evaporation is weighty for effective planning and judicious management of available water resources for agricultural practices. Thus, this work enhances the potential of support vector regression (SVR) optimized with a novel nature-inspired algorithm, namely, Slap Swarm Algorithm (SVR-SSA) against Whale Optimization Algorithm (SVR-WOA), Multi-Verse Optimizer (SVR-MVO), Spotted Hyena Optimizer (SVR-SHO), Particle Swarm Optimization (SVR-PSO), and Penman model (PM). Daily EP (pan-evaporation) was estimated in two different agro-climatic zones (ACZ) in northern India. The optimal combination of input parameters was extracted by applying the Gamma test (GT). The outcomes of the hybrid of SVR and PM models were equated with recorded daily EP observations based on goodness-of-fit measures along with graphical scrutiny. The results of the appraisal showed that the novel hybrid SVR-SSA-5 model performed superior (MAE = 0.697, 1.556, 0.858 mm/day; RMSE = 1.116, 2.114, 1.202 mm/day; IOS = 0.250, 0.350, 0.303; NSE = 0.0.861, 0.750, 0.834; PCC = 0.929, 0.868, 0.918; IOA = 0.960, 0.925, 0.956) than other models in testing phase at Hisar, Bathinda, and Ludhiana stations, respectively. In conclusion, the hybrid SVR-SSA model was identified as more suitable, robust, and reliable than the other models for daily EP estimation in two different ACZ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]