Manitoba Agriculture reports the past week saw warmer temperatures which helped advance crop growth along with variable amounts of rainfall and hail in some regions.
Anne Kirk, a cereal crop specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says we did have much warmer temperatures over this past week, which advanced crop growth especially in those warmer season crops like corn and soybeans, but scattered storms and thunderstorms brought variable amounts of rain and in some areas, hail.
Crop quality is fairly variable as well. For spring wheat for example, most of the crop would be rated as good. A small percent in each region would be rated as poor and then a small percent is rated as excellent in each region. In most areas for most crops, we are seeing some drowned out areas in fields so areas that did have precipitation sitting for quite some time do have drowned out areas or areas with yellow or delayed crop growth.
For spring cereals in particular, because we did see some of these heavy storms over the past week and on the weekend, we did have some lodging in cereal fields in particular. For field peas in some regions, it’s a bit tricky because they don’t really like being wet so more concerns with root rot and poor field conditions just in those very wet regions. Iron deficiencies, sclerosis in soybeans is showing up in fields also as a result of those moisture conditions.
I’m thinking general crop condition look good. It really depends on how wet areas certain areas have been because crops obviously don’t like to be under water for extended periods of time so in areas were crops have been under water for extended periods, fields can be fairly patchy or have larger drowned out areas.
~ Anne Kirk, Manitoba Agriculture
Kirk says warmer temperatures forecast over the weekend and into next week are expected advance crop growth, but because so much can change between now and harvest it’s still too early to estimate yield potential.
