The Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada reports winter cereal crops that were planted last fall are in excellent condition.
A difficult 2015 growing season, which saw the canola harvest delayed due to reseeded crops and slow growth, limited the number of acres available to plant winter cereals last fall.
Jake Davidson, the Executive Director of Winter Cereals Canada, says the number of acres of winter wheat fell below 240,000 acres in Manitoba and just over 200,000 in Saskatchewan but the acres that were planted are in excellent condition.
We had the mild winter and good spring and winter cereals, whether it be fall rye or winter wheat, it just sucks up water. People are telling me that there’s fields with water sitting on it and when they look at their winter wheat fields, they’re not anything even close. The winter wheat is a real scavenger for water and is a great crop for a year when the spring is wet because the winter wheat sucks it up.
Most places are abundant to over abundant in water. The number of places that report inadequate water are, from what I hear from various broadcasts, seem to be well below 10 percent. The crop has got lots of water, good temperatures.
I haven’t heard anybody complaining about fusarium but people have been spraying. Even though we do have varieties now that are rated as fusarium resistant, it’s more than apparent that you get more than fusarium control out of spraying because even non-fusarium infected crops that get sprayed appear to have the advantage over other crops that weren’t sprayed so right now 2016 looks like it’s going to be a great year. ~ Jake Davidson, Winter Cereals Canada
Davison notes he’s already seen canola fields coming into bloom, which puts canola in a really good place for this year and if the canola comes off early it will provide a good stubble base for winter cereals. He hopes to see the number of winter wheat acres double at least this coming fall.
