|
Over 30 percent of winter wheat and some 50 percent of winter barley in Ukraine will have to be re-seeded, head of agro-meteorological dept. at Ukrainian weather centre Tetyana Adamenko said to media on Friday.
The conclusion has been made after obtaining monolith growing tests of the plant samples, taken from fields after the first wave of frosts on January 27.
The researchers have also notes a considerable loss rate of winter rye, which is uncharacteristic for this crop of rather high frost-resistance.
"It (rye) is frost-resistant in case of normal development. But if the planting was late or if the plants are on the seed-sprouting or the initial shooting stages, the frost-resistance is considerably hurt," Adamenko said.
She said that January's frosts had been extremely destructive for the frost-sensitive rapeseeds, but the weather centre did not have the exact data because no observation of this crop was being made.
The crop losses are registered nearly all over the territory of the country. "The damaged fields are everywhere… It can be said now that the winter crops development will be extremely uneven… When the snow had fallen, there were strong winds, and the snow cover turned to be patchy," Ms. Adamenko said. She said that the crop condition was a little bit better in the west and north-west of the country.
The weather centre specialists say these data are not the final ones. The next monolith growing test results will most probably display further increase of the crop loss rate.
According to statistics data, winter cereals for grain and green feed uses (rapeseeds not included) for the 2006 crop were sown in Ukraine on 6.194 million hectares - down 18.8 percent from the year before. The drop in the sown area is accounted to extremely dry conditions in autumn 2005.
|
