Ukrainian heat and dryness in May killed about 40% of winter rape sown area
This year the last spring month in Ukraine happened to be abnormally hot and dry. During three weeks many Ukrainian regions were suffering from 30 degrees heat and absence of rains. In this period of a year such weather conditions are extremely unfavorable for most of the crops.
Throughout the whole Ukrainian territory the amount of ground moisture decreased significantly. In the North and West of the country occasional rains took place, thus here the situation is more or less admissible. As for the East and South of Ukraine, the upper soil layers in these regions got too dry, cracked and crusted over. This drought led to a considerable worsening of winter rape crops. Many plants became yellow and faded, the ears are small and weak, lots of sprouts are dying.
According to the data of the Ukrainian Ministry of Agrarian policy, effective on May 24th, 2012 the rape sown has sprouted on 732,6 thousand hectare surface (76,2% of the total sowing area), among them 443,5 thousand hectares (60,5%) are in a satisfactory state and on 100,0 thousand hectares (13,7%) the sprouts are rare and weak, Moreover, on 229,0 thousand hectares (23,8% of the entire territory) the crops haven’t germinated, and on 189,5 thousand hectares they died.
Due to experts’ assessments, among 961,6 thousand hectares of sown area winter rape crops remained intact on 543 thousand hectares (69%). Therefore, in 2012 the total sowing area of winter and core rape got by 30% less that last year.
At present the rape crops in Dnepropetrovsk, Poltava, Kherson, Kirovograd, Nikolaev and Kharkov regions are in the worst state. There only 50-80% of sprouts stayed alive. Even the most optimistic forecasts say that at least 35% will have to be sown again.
Experts predict that such a significant decrease of sprouts will lead to a considerable reduction of crops capacity, the gross harvest will be 850 tonnes, that is by 550 thousand tones less compared to the previous year. Consequently this year the export of rape crop will be significantly less. Its volume is predicted to be not more than 780 thousand tones.
