August 5 2004, 12:22 APK-Inform

Ukraine at danger of heavy grain losses to weather cataclysms

During the last two days the condition of grain crops in Ukraine has significantly worsened, the Chief of Agro-Meteorological Department in Ukrainian Centre for Hydro-Meteorology Tetyana Adamenko has told an APK-Inform reporter today.

She said rains had inflicted most of the damage to grain crops in the western past of Ukraine. The plants development here has been deterred and grains in many locations are unable to reach its full ripeness.

Adamenko also said that an extremely difficult situation had taken shape in northern regions of the country, especially in Kiev Oblast. Thus, a great damage has been inflicted to plantings of wheat, barley, rye and maize in one of agricultural districts of this region - Baryshevka Raion - where water had flooded the fields (over the last ten days this area received one third of the yearly precipitation norm). Ms. Adamenko said even if grain here were ultimately harvested, its quality would be "conventional" (i.e. out of classes) and the harvested grains would have to be utilised as feed mixtures.

The weather centre has informed that in the period of July 25 - August 3 strong showers, hailstorms and squalls created extremely difficult conditions for harvest of early grains in Ukraine. The amount of rainfall in many locations of Volyn, Zakarpatye, Kiev, Ivano-Frankovsk, Lvov, Khmelnitsky, Chrekassy and Chernovtsy Oblasts reached monthly norm and in some places exceeded it twice or three times, reaching 70 to 245 mm. In the remaining areas of western and northern regions and in central regions the amount of precipitations in this period was mostly 30 to 50 mm.

According to agro-meteorological research, a situation like this night result in considerable losses of grain because of grain sprouting in swaths on the harvested fields and in the ear on unharvested ones (grain sprouting starts at the sum of precipitations 20 mm and over). Such weather conditions may also considerably worsen grain quality, causing a drop in the gluten content, which will result in degradation of grain baking qualities. The excessive amount of rainfall like the one currently in pace may trigger up "dripping" of grain (a 15 to 30 percent decrease in its weight on account of losses of sugar, decomposition of starch and outflow of plastic substances).