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Outlook positive for corn and sunflower crops

An agronomy extension specialist with the Manitoba Crop Alliance is optimistic about this year's corn crop.

"Corn is still looking really nice," said Morgan Cott. "It's moving along. I'm seeing this week, at least the fields that I've been checking are in the dough stage. A little further behind than we want obviously, nothing's changing there or going to change. I did see a couple cobs that had a little bit of a dent starting, so that's really positive. It means that moisture is being used up and starch is filling so hopefully that is sort of a quicker process than normal, but the heat's helping. So good news there."

She commented on the recent weather.

"The corn is enjoying the heat and the moisture is certainly helping because I've seen a few fields that have showed slight drought symptoms...The only issue that I'm having with the weather right now is because it gets so hot and then the nights get so cool that the heat unit accumulation is not as great as I think we expect it to be. When temperatures go below ten at night, which isn't very often, but they get low enough, and then they go above 30 in the daytime, then those periods we're not accumulating anything. We just want to keep it that sweet medium area between 10 and 30, nothing more, nothing less to accumulate and get the crop moving."

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