Frost and ice have killed 1.6 percent of Ukrainian winter grain area as of March 11 compared to 0.3 percent a week earlier, Interfax Ukraine news agency quoted official data as showing on Monday. The data also showed the area under ice crust rose to 9.1 percent from 7.2 percent.
Ice on Ukrainian field killed about one million hectares of winter crops in the 2007/08 season, causing a decrease in wheat crop to 13.7 million tonnes. Ukraine harvested 24.2 million tonnes of wheat in 2008 and 20.8 million in 2009. The agency also said about 13.5 percent of the winter grain area, or 1.1 million hectares, were in poor state as of March 11 compared to 10.3 percent in late February.
The State Statistics Committee last year said farms had increased winter grain sowing area for 2010 to 8.6 million hectares or by 3.7 percent compared to 2009. UkrAgroConsult agriculture consultancy last month said farms were likely to sow a total 16.145 million hectares to the 2010 grain harvest compared to 15.67 million a year earlier. It also said cold weather across Ukraine was preventing farms from spring grain sowing and the pace of sowing was twice as low as it was in 2009.