Temperature and relative humidity in a commercial bread wheat field, recorded by an automated meteorological station and a digital sensor in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico

Abstract

Meteorological parameters determine most agronomic events, with temperature being the climatological factor most closely related to the annual productivity of a crop. The objective of this work was to monitor the temperature and relative humidity at different growth stages of a commercial bread wheat field, during the crop season 2017-2018. The work was carried out with data obtained from December 12, 2017 (sowing date) to April 18, 2018, from a mobile OMEGA OM-EL-USB-2 sensor within the field, sown with the bread wheat cultivar Borlaug 100, located in Block 1020, in the Yaqui Valley, Sonora, Mexico, and from the Block 910-CIANO meteorological station, located 8 km away, which is the closest to the field. Calculations were made for the average temperature, relative humidity and cold units (CU). In addition, the data was filtered by day and night time, considering daytime data from 7:00 to 18:00 and nighttime data from 19:00 to 06:00. The CU recorded by the sensor was higher with 384 than the meteorological station, which accumulated a total of 321. The temperature during the day was on average 2.9 °C higher than that recorded by the meteorological station, and 1.6 °C lower at night. The relative humidity recorded by the sensor was 5 % higher than that recorded by the meteorological station.