Manitoba Agriculture reports that warm weather in the province over the past week has rapidly advanced crop development. Sonia Wilson, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says growers expect to begin harvest within the next couple of weeks.
We saw variable precipitation again with some accumulations of rain in the southwest, central, and eastern but very little to none in the Interlake region. We also saw some quite warm temperatures over this past week, reaching kind of average 30 to 34 degrees, so quite warm. We’re definitely seeing with these warmer temperatures that crops are moving quite quickly through their growth stages and continue to progress quickly as we move into harvest.
The winter wheat and fall rye are sitting at the hard dough stage in most regions with some fields ripe in the southwest. Those will probably get going in the next week or two here. We’re also seeing that barley and oats are going to be expected to begin being desiccated. Some will be a couple weeks out in the southwest and eastern regions. Overall, the majority of spring cereals are kind of in that soft dough to hard dough stage and then corn, we’re sitting somewhere between silking to cobs fully pollinated at this stage as well. Canola is really across the board so there are some fields in central that are sitting at a 40 to potentially 60 percent seed colour change. So again, a couple weeks out, but definitely moving rapidly with these warm temperatures. Sunflowers range from that R5.1 to 5.9 and the majority of our soybeans are at R3, as well as peas at that R5 with the earliest seeded being at R6.
~ Sonia Wilson, Manitoba Agriculture
Wilson says, in terms of disease, we’re starting to see some sclerotinia in canola even in some fields that have been sprayed and there are reports of fusarium head blight in cereals. She says there are reports of bertha armyworm but still below the threshold for spraying and there are reports of grasshoppers in the cereal fields.
