In the future, HungaroMet Zrt will also provide information on the duration of leaf moisture

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On the Agrometeorology page of the www.met.hu website, an estimate is now given, based on the weather of the previous days, of how long the leaf surface may have been wet, and according to the latest forecasts, how long it is expected to be wet in the coming days. The leaf wetness duration (in English terminology: Leaf Wetness Duration) is a key piece of information in plant protection, because the surface of the leaf (per type of plant and fungus) must be wet for a certain period of time for fungal diseases to develop. In addition to the weather, the water appearing on the leaves strongly depends on the size of the leaf surface, the shape of the leaves, the type and development phase of the plant as a whole, but the density, height, and cultivation technique of the stock also have a significant influence, they noted. On the one hand, the website provides the length of humid periods with a humidity higher than 90 percent, which is used to provide an estimate for humid and foggy periods without falling precipitation. Since the development of fungal diseases requires several days, humidity period maps summarized for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10 days are also presented. In addition, they provide an estimate for wet leaf periods, i.e. summing up the periods when the leaf surface was wet due to rain after subtracting the balance of falling precipitation and evaporation. These values are reported separately for herbaceous and woody plant cultures, since a dense wheat field stays wet at the end of May for a completely different time than an orchard that is easily blown by the wind, they wrote.

MTI