November 25, 2011

Ukraine's drought affects autumn crops

Ukraine's most severe autumn drought has affected the pace of sowing of autumn crops and their condition before entering the winter, according to Tetiana Adamenko from Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Centre.

"The main crop in Ukraine, winter wheat, and now its fate does not look favourable to us. We can say that in Ukraine the duration of the autumn drought has reached 75-80 days, November was the driest month in 50 years," she said.

According Adamenko, on a third of the sown areas seedlings did not appear at all. It is unlikely that the situation will change, despite forecasts for a warm winter.

"Maybe in the spring we will have to resow and interplant a significant part of the crops. If the weather is warm, somewhere +6+9°C, then perhaps some shoots will appear only in the Crimea, where more than half of the seedlings did not give shoots," the scientist emphasised.

Adamenko said that Ukraine for the first time is in a situation when winter crops entered the winter without shoots, so "one cannot expect a large harvest".

By the end of the month the weather in Ukraine will not change and remain without precipitation, weather forecasters say.