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Evaporation: Viticulture
Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine
Published 2006
There are three sorts of evaporation in the vineyard. First, there is evaporation from the soil, which is especially significant while the soil surface is wet. Then there is evaporation from the vine leaves, and lastly from other parts of the vine (bunches wet from rain, for example), which can have important disease implications.
The power of the atmosphere to evaporate water is related inversely to its humidity and directly to its temperature. Unfortunately the direct climatic records of evaporation, or potential evaporation, are sparse. The records are further confused by the fact that different countries use different instruments for measurement of evaporation. Nevertheless broad averages for regions can be estimated with fair accuracy, and these allow calculation of irrigation requirements, for example.