According to weather forecasts, the air temperature will rise to +18 degrees Celsius during daylight hours this week. Precipitation is unlikely.
“This week’s warm weather is like a “lifeline”, an unusual grace of nature for Moldovan agrarians,” said Mihail Vronskih, an expert of the National Center for Research and Seed Production of the Republic of Moldova. – It is necessary to use not even every day, but every hour to complete the harvesting of crops of the second group, especially sunflower, which is already crumbling, which is fraught with a decrease in the already low yield, as well as the aggravation of phytosanitary problems in the very near future.
It is also important to complete sowing of winter wheat and barley as soon as possible. Late sowing is in any case a big risk, especially if we take into account the forecasts of European meteorological centers about abnormally cold winter. But if the rest of October and part of November will be warm, there are chances that even late sowings of winter cereals will have time to “enter winter” in the stage of tillering, not sprouting. Otherwise, the risk of frost will be too high.
Many experts agree that in the context of climate transformation towards warming and tougher droughts, Moldovan farmers should increase the share of winter crops in the structure of crops – crops of “cold” period of the agricultural cycle. They have a better chance to “catch” slightly higher reserves of autumn-winter moisture in the soil and give a relatively normal harvest.
