The past cold snap does not threaten the grain harvest, but things are not so good with fruits

Taras Vysotskyi, First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food, believes that the cold snap in the first ten days of April in Ukraine does not have a critical negative impact on basic agricultural crops. But, according to him, horticulture is at risk.

"But again, there are available technologies when we talk about industrial horticulture, how to protect plants, plantings so that there is no negative impact," said Taras Vysotskyi.

According to him, a sharp warming is forecast this week, which will make up for the halt in vegetation in the current period. Therefore, he is sure, there is "no reason to worry today - Ukraine will have a harvest and food security will be guaranteed."

But for now, the government official added, the sowing campaign is lagging behind last year by 200,000 hectares due to the cold snap. He noted that the sowing campaign has actually stopped for a week.

"In our scale, when it is planned to sow more than 13 million hectares with all crops, such a delay is not critical and will generally not affect the campaign, which is being resumed and will last around the clock," the Ministry representative emphasized.

It should be noted that, as of April 11, farmers have sown 1 million hectares of spring grain and leguminous crops. Corn sowing has begun in the Zaporizhzhia region. Currently, the largest area of crops is barley - 612.2 thousand hectares. Spring wheat has already been sown on 141.1 thousand hectares, peas - 182.8 thousand hectares, oats - 106.1 thousand hectares, corn - 0.02 thousand hectares. The leading regions in terms of sowing rates are Odesa region (107.2 thousand hectares), Ternopil region (88.1 thousand hectares) and Poltava region (86.3 thousand hectares).

As for horticulture, the result of the cold snap on these crops can be assessed only in a few weeks. But it is already known that, for example, due to the April frosts, gardeners in Vinnytsia region lost more than 90% of the apricot harvest.

"The weather conditions of the last week had a bad impact on horticulture, today we can already say for sure that we have lost part of the harvest. In particular, apricots, which were blooming at this time, the harvest has been lost by 90-100%. Perhaps we will collect something from late varieties of apricots, which will bloom a little later," Serhiy Boichuk, head of the Vinnytsiasadvynprom Association of Gardeners of Vinnytsia region, told reporters.

He added that other stone fruits were also frozen, including sweet cherries and cherries. However, forecasts for the harvest can be made only during their flowering. But part of the harvest is guaranteed to be lost - up to 20-30%. According to him, the frosts also affected pome fruits (pears and apples) and gardeners will not receive part of the harvest. According to optimistic forecasts, we are talking about a 20% shortfall. The anticyclone also affected berry crops, despite the fact that they did not bloom during the period of rapid cooling. Low temperatures negatively affected the course of vegetation processes, which will affect the yield of raspberries and blueberries in particular.