DOHA (Reuters) - Winter will come early to soccer stadiums in baking-hot Qatar when groundskeepers blast chilled air starting in September to ensure pitch turf thrives in the desert country for the World Cup.
Mimicking winter in the Persian Gulf state, where temperatures can swelter at 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in the fall, is just one trick experts have introduced over the last 14 years to improve turf quality and increase the number of soccer pitches.
An elite corps of groundskeepers now maintains 144 green, lush fields -- eight stadium pitches and 136 training grounds. They blast chilled air through nozzles directly at the turf, tending luxuriant patches of green dotted amid the dun or grey of Qatar’s desert and concrete.
“The weather condition and the climate together with the level of performance criteria we have set for ourselves make it extremely challenging to develop the product we need. But we succeeded,” said Haitham Al Shareef, a Sudanese civil engineer who has worked on Qatar’s pitches since 2007.
Preparing turf for the World Cup, being held for the first time in the Middle East, is environmentally costly.
Qatar flies in 140 tonnes of grass seed annually from the United States on climate-controlled aircraft, Al Shareef said, and pitches are watered with desalinated seawater, in an energy-intensive process burning the country’s wealth of natural gas.
Each pitch requires 10,000 liters of desalinated water daily in winter and 50,000 litres in the summer, he added.
The 28-day event begins in November at perhaps the most challenging time of year for durable turf, as Qatar’s weather transitions from searing summer to mild winter.