Weather
Hot dry wind (garmsel) in wheat, cotton and maize
A hot dry wind parches plants even when the soil is moist: cereal grain ends up shrivelled, and cotton sheds buds and fruitlets. The plant loses water faster than its roots can supply it. A strong hot dry wind cuts wheat yields by 10–20%.
Crops: Wheat, Cotton, Maize, Vegetables, Orchards, Grapes
When it is dangerous
Flowering and grain fill are the most dangerous stages, and for cotton budding and flowering. During grain fill the wind cuts off the flow of nutrients into the grain, which shrivels, and this damage cannot be undone. Plants tolerate a weak hot dry wind for about 5 days, a very intense one for only 1–2 days.
Causes
- Dry tropical air carried in by an anticyclone
- Low soil moisture that makes the impact worse
- No field shelterbelts
- The wind coinciding with grain fill
Signs on the field
- Plants wilt in the daytime although the soil is moist
- Leaves curl
- Glumes turn white, and grain is shrivelled and light
- The crop yellows early
How ClusterOS notices it
Weather is the main source: ClusterOS follows temperature, air humidity and wind and can warn about a day ahead. The classic definition of a hot dry wind is air humidity of 30% or less, temperature of 25 °C or more and wind of 5 m/s or more, all at the same time. Sentinel-2 imagery confirms the drop of water in leaves (the NDMI moisture index) only a few days later, when the grain has already suffered. Soil drought is told apart by soil moisture: if the soil is moist but the plant is drying out, it is a hot dry wind.
What to do
- Apply a cooling irrigation or sprinkling if you can – sprinkling lowers crop temperature
- Log irrigations: moist soil softens the blow, while imagery picks up damage only after a few days
- Watch the condition of the field over the next few days
- At grain fill, check the ears: only a field inspection confirms shrivelled grain
Questions
What is garmsel?
Garmsel is the Uzbek name for a hot dry wind, known in Russian as sukhovei. It occurs when high temperature, dry air and wind come together. The plant loses water faster than its roots can supply it, even in moist soil.
Does irrigation help against a hot dry wind?
Moist soil reduces the damage: above 80% of field capacity plants usually get through without critical losses. Watering alone does not cure a dry atmosphere, but sprinkling cools the crop – in trials a 2 mm application lowered air temperature by 2.3–7.6 °C. On rainfed land there is no moisture reserve, so the damage is most severe.
Learn about this risk on your fields before it becomes a loss
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Other risks in «Weather»
Scientific basis
- Золотокрылин А.Н., Цубербиллер Е.А., EOLSS «Dry Winds, Dust Storms and Prevention of Damage to Agricultural Land»
- Kang et al. 2022, PLoS ONE, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274118
- Zhao et al. 2022, Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34947-6
- Liu, Ren, Zhou, Liu 2024, Agronomy 14(9):1962, DOI: 10.3390/agronomy14091962