February 11 2004, 16:33 APK-Inform

90-95 pc of winter crops will survive, despite coming frosts

According to Ukrainian weather centre, a significant drop of temperature is expected all over the territory of the country on February 13-14. The temperatures are forecast to drop to minus 13 degrees Celsius. However, according to the Head of Agro-Meteorological Department Tetyana Adamenko, the cold snap will make not any strong negative effect upon the state of winter crops. As the drop in temperatures will be short-timed and it was preceded by warm weather period (5 to 7 degrees above the norm), the soil temperature at the tillering node depth is not expected to drop down the critical values. Besides, despite the recent warm weather, a 5 to 7 centimeter deep snow layer has been retained in many regions, which is enough to protect the plants.

"We can state already now that 90 to 95 percent of plantings will survive the winter successfully", Ms. Adamenko said.

She also said that the research of weather centre had indicated that the loss of winter crops in this season would be much lower than the natural rate (less than 10 percent).