Climate change has created favorable conditions for cotton cultivation in Ukraine. In the 1950s, a cotton cultivation programme failed in southern Ukraine due to a lack of warmth, as explained by Tatiana Adamenko, the head of agrometeorology at the Hydrometeorological Center, in an interview with LIGA.net.
"For normal maturation, this crop needs to accumulate at least 3600°C of active temperatures during the growing season. But back then, it was colder. Even in Kherson and Crimea—the southernmost regions of Ukraine—cotton could only accumulate 2700°C to 3000°C. This resulted in poor quality and low yields, leading to the abandonment of cotton cultivation," she explained.
Nowadays, southern regions of Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odessa, and Zaporizhzhia regions fall within thermal zones with accumulated temperatures ranging from 3400°C to 3700°C.
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"Over the past 20 years, Ukraine has experienced almost continuous warming. There has been only one year during this period when the average temperature approached the climatic norm. In all other years, actual temperatures have risen significantly above the norm," clarified Tatiana Adamenko.
In 2023, the average annual temperature in Ukraine was +10.8°C, which is +3°C (almost a third) above the climatic norm.
In Odessa region, where the first cotton fields were planted, the average temperature reached +12.4°C last year. This figure is only 1.5°C lower than temperatures recorded near Tashkent 40 years ago, when Uzbekistan was already a globally recognized center for cotton cultivation.
