Development of vegetation and crops in the Ukrainian and Russian growing areas

_{Ukraine / Russia cw 24}

06/19/2007: Drought damage has extended to Russia

Since our report in cw 21 of first drought damage in many growing areas of the Ukraine no improvement has occurred. On the contrary, a comparison between the satellite images of cw 21 and cw 24 shows that the situation has changed for the worse in many areas. Despite isolated rainfall over the last three weeks (the white coloured pixels on the image display clouds) many crops couldn’t recover and are irreparably damaged.

_{Ukraine / Russia cw 21}

In the meantime drought damage has extended to the most important growing region of Russia, to the South Federal District and especially to the Rostovskaja oblast. But also for Krasnodar and Volgograd, the regions monitored by IntelCrop, yield cuts are expected, caused by dryness combined with high daily temperatures. For Krasnodar in week 24 our model estimated a yield on the level of the second worst yield result of the last 8 years.

The oblasts Krasnodar, Volgograd, Rostov and Stavropol are the most important winter wheat growing regions of the Russian South Federal District and 35% of the total Russian winter wheat is produced there.

As usual, our satellite images show the state of crops in the specified calendar week in comparison to the historical average. Yellow, orange and red colours indicate thereby decreasing crop conditions.

05/29/2007: Rain is missing in important Ukrainian growing regions

_{Ukraine cw 21 2007}

The hopes of high crop yields in 2007 have been dashed in some regions of the Ukraine due to the lack of rainfall. The main areas concerned are in the South and Southeast of the country.

Only little amounts of spring precipitation, which is very important for crop development, in combination with a small sum of winter rain, causes the condition of the cereal crops to be evaluated as critical in some Oblasts. For instance, only about 16 mm of rain has fallen in the Oblast Dnepropetrovsk since April. This is less than 1/3 of the average of the years 1997-2006 (56 mm) for the months April and May.

In the western parts of the country the situation is less strained, however these are less important grain cultivation areas.

In the Oblast Odessa, observed and estimated by IntelCrop, the crop condition in the northern Rayons currently looks more critical than in the southern ones. Again, the IntelCrop prognosis model has decreased the current yield forecasts of winter wheat for calendar week 21 by about 13% compared to March. On the difference satellite image of cw 21 the most critical regions are clearly identifiable by the red colour.

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05/11/2006: Yield prognosis for the Ukraine by 4cast reduced again

Caused by missing rain falls for more than 20 days, the model for yield prognoses 4cast/Wheat again reduced the estimation for the yield of winter wheat to 2.1 tons/hectare. Last weekend's rainfall of 17 mm could not compensate the effects of the dry conditions. So the winter wheat crops continue to develop under average, after having been reduced by the strong frost during January.

The yield prediction model 4cast/Barley estimates the yield for spring barley in the cultivation area Vinnitsa by 2.3 tons/hectare. In this Ukrainian region the crops urgently need water.

05/04/2006: Spring barley area this year in Ukraine

Recent estimations of spring barley cultivated area 2006 in the Ukraine have been corrected upwards by the Ukrainian agrarian Ministry, according to a report from 27 April, and amounts now to 4.47 million hectares.

Thus the spring barley cultivated area would be the second largest over the last 10 years and comparable with those of the year 2003 (4.49 Mill. hectares). However unfavourable weather conditions in the vegetative growth phase in most parts of the Ukraine 2003, resulted in low hectare yields and the total production quantity were under the ten years average value.

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03/13/2006: Situation of winter crops in Ukraine and Russia

IntelCrop has already reported on the weather situation during the hard cooling period this year in the East.

According to recently released estimates, which the Ukrainian Secretary of Agriculture Oleksandr Baraniwsky communicated at the beginning of March, about 1.6 Mill hectares are in bad condition this year. This corresponds to about 26% of the estimated sown winter grain surface with 6.06 Mill. hectares (of that approx. 5.14 Mill. wheat) in Ukraine. Regionally, the situation shows up quite differently, due to partially strong winds, which thinned out the protecting snow layer. According to internally available information, the region Kherson for example is more strongly affected by frost damage. The comparatively more strained precipitation situation before the extreme cooling break-down may contribute to this greater loss. However, it has to be considered that, up to a certain portion - 800.000 hectares as an approximate figure -, resowing of winter crops area is common practice in Ukraine.

Similar varying situations occur in the important wheat areas of Russia, the extent of the frost damage varies strongly over the regions. For the Krasnodar region the loss can compose to 5-8%. For the entire southern district an average of 11-14 % of damaged winter crop area is assumed, while the region Rostov at Don and Wolgograd are affected above average from the hard winter condition.

02/15/2006: Snowpack and severe cold wave in eastern Europe's winter wheat cultivation areas

_{Russia cw3 2006}

During the severe cold wave which overspread Russia in cw 3 (January 16 through 22), our satellite image shows a continuous snowpack over this region (white colored), so that dormant winter wheat in these growing areas was protected by an adequate snowpack against the bitter cold.

The cold wave overspread the Central Russian growing area of Kursk by January 17. Temperatures remained under -22 °C through January 24. The coldest readings (-28 °C) were observed on January 18 and 22. Similar conditions were observed in the Southern and Volga Region in Russia.

_{south-east Ukraine cw4 2006}

The arctic chill spread across the eastern part of South Ukraine some days later, at the end of cw 3 and during cw 4 (January 23 through 29). In these growing regions, winter wheat was then covered by a continuous snowpack. During cw 4 too, entire Ukraine was covered by a continuous snowpack as well, as the satellite image shows.

In the Zaporizh Region, one of the typical winter wheat growing areas, the coldest readings (-25 °C and lower) were observed during January 21 through 25. Coldest day was January 23 (-30°C).