Extra measures have been put in place to ensure the pitch at Soccer City remains in top shape for the duration of the World Cup, which ends with the final at the Soweto stadium on July 11.
The recent cold snap on the highveld has led to frosty conditions at night, causing discolouration of the pitch at one end of Soccer City, which was clearly visible during Sunday's Group G match between Brazil and Ivory Coast.
"It's the impact of shade and frosting," FIFA pitch consultant John Lockyer, who is responsible for the pitches at all 10 World Cup stadiums, told a press conference Monday.
Lockyer said the short daylight hours during the South African winter meant the section of pitch has been in almost permanent shade for nearly three weeks now, with the problem exacerbated by the impact of recent frost.
Germination blankets, supplemental growth lights and a protective frost cover are now all in place to protect the surface and with warmer temperatures expected in the coming days, Lockyer believes the problem with grass growth will be resolved.
"We expect that to catch up quite quickly in the next few days," he said.
While the pitches in high-altitude Johannesburg and Pretoria have to fight with the problem of frost, the surfaces in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth have at times had to be closed because of rain.
Several pre-match training sessions at the two stadiums have had to be called off to protect the playing surface.
"These are completely normal measures," said FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot.
Despite the problems, the pitches at this year's World Cup are a vast improvement on the surfaces that teams had to deal with at the 2009 Confederations Cup.
The pitch at Ellis Park stadium in Johannesburg, for example, was uneven and completely cut up as result of rugby matches played there in the run-up to the tournament.
Although there have been mutterings of discontent about the semi- synthetic surface in Polokwane, no team has lodged a complaint about any World Cup playing surface so far.
The experts in charge of the World Cup's pitch management programme are using a mixture of summer and winter grass in an effort to overcome what Lockyer described as difficult climatic conditions.
