KYIV (Reuters) – Sudden changes in weather conditions across Ukraine recently and frequent thaws could have a negative impact on winter cereals this year, reducing their resistance, consultancy APK-Inform quoted government scientists as saying on Monday.
“Changing temperature conditions, prolonged thaws, restoration of growth processes during overwintering – all this leads to … reduction of winter hardiness of winter crops,” APK-Inform cited Ukraine’s National Agrarian Academy as saying in a report.
“Potential risks under changing weather conditions are quite high,” the scientists added.
Winter wheat has historically accounted for about 95% of all wheat grown in Ukraine, but the yield depends largely on favourable weather conditions from autumn to late spring.
The scientists said the second half of December and the beginning of January had been characterised by abnormally warm weather, but the thaw has now been replaced by deep frosts over almost the entire territory.
Ukrainian farmers sowed around 4.2 million hectares of winter wheat for the 2024 harvest versus 4.5 million a year earlier.
Ukraine’s first deputy minister Taras Vysotskiy said late last year the country could harvest up to 20 million metric tons of winter wheat from the sown area.
Ukraine harvested more than 22 million tons of wheat last year.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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