Manitoba Agriculture is reporting that warmer weather over this past week has accelerated crop development across the province.
Sonia Wilson, an oilseed specialist with Manitoba Agriculture, says over the past week we saw variable amounts of precipitation and warmer temperatures.
There were some significant amounts of rainfall in parts of northwest, central, and eastern as well. In terms of growing degree days, we’ve definitely seen some warmer temperatures, so right now we are sitting at about 797 to 1112 growing degree days with most of southern Manitoba having accumulated quite a few, over 930. So, we are seeing quite a fast development for most crops with these warm temperatures, so really moving through the growth stages, especially crops that were later seeded.
At this point, it’s very dependent again on your region, so as mentioned a couple weeks ago, there was definitely large amounts of hail damage that had gone through in the Killarney region, etcetera, so there was definitely crop loss there and we also have seen the excess moisture stress, especially in the northwest and parts of the Interlake.
The other regions do look quite strong in terms of where we’re sitting for crops, particularly cereals and canola, as well as the corn, so we’ll likely be seeing quite strong yield potential and then just more stress though in some of those areas that received a lot of excess moisture, especially in June and even into July, as well as the areas that received the really significant hail damage.
~ Sonia wilson, Manitoba Agriculture
Wilson says over the next week farmers will be finishing up the last of spraying for fusarium head blight and scouting fields for signs of plant diseases and insect infestations.
