Qatar's World Cup turf needs chilled stadiums, desalinated water to thrive

DOHA: Winter will come early to football 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 Gulf state, where temperatures can swelter at 40 degrees Celsius in the fall, is just one trick experts have introduced over the last 14 years to improve turf quality and increase the number of football 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 makes 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 litres 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.

Some grass varieties turn dormant as temperatures rise and winter ryegrass takes root, making adequate growth a