Shift to Warmer Weather Advances Manitoba Crop Development

Manitoba Agriculture reports warmer weather conditions across the province over the past week advanced crop growth while isolated heavy rains occurred in several regions.Manitoba Agriculture released its weekly crop report Tuesday.

Dennis Lange, a pulse and soybean specialist with Manitoba Agriculture and editor of the provincial crop report, says warmer weather is helping advance crop development and crops that were behind, especially soybeans, dry beans and corn, are starting to catch up.

Quote-Dennis Lange-Manitoba Agriculture:

We've gotten definitely some warmer and more humid weather over the last week or so and it looks like that is going to continue moving forward.We have had some heavy rains that have occurred over the week.Precipitation ranged anywhere from just a trace all the way to 43 millimetres of moisture in some areas this year so things are definitely moving along.All areas are reporting some low areas where there was drowned out crop, that type of thing.They're relatively small for the most part.

Areas of the northern Interlake were further behind all spring with the rainfall so those crops are struggling a more for those growers that did get crop planted in those areas so it's a little bit tougher conditions up there but, overall, the crops are recovering nicely.The cereals are looking generally fairly good and soybeans are catching up now so that's a bonus so we'll see how things progress.For the most part there's not a lot of disease issues showing up yet other than in peas we've had some reports of Mycosphaerella blight but that goes hand in hand with the kind of conditions we've had this year.

Lange says most growers would like to see some warmer drier conditions to maintain crop development.He says hotter weather, with temperatures in the 30s, is in forecast for the weekend and into next week which will hopefully dry things up and move development forward but he acknowledges there's always a risk of thunderstorms when you get those kinds of conditions.For more visit Farmscape.Ca.