KIEV - Agriculture consultancy UkrAgroConsult has slightly raised its forecast for the Ukrainian winter wheat crop in 2016 to 17.8 million tons from 17.5 million tons because of a larger planting area, the company said in a report on Tuesday.
Still, the consultancy warned that the 2016 crop would be much less than the 2015 harvest of 23.4 million tons because of drought conditions in Ukraine.
"After the recent update, the planted area of wheat appeared to be 973,595 acres larger than the initial forecast, butv significantly smaller than last year," UkrAgroConsult said.
"As before, sowing of winter crops for the 2016 harvest is the lowest in the past decade."
A severe drought during the summer and autumn, affecting half of Ukraine's grain region, forced farmers to halt winter grain sowing, leading to concerns of a poor harvest in 2016.
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UkrAgroConsult said the area sown for the 2016 winter wheat harvest had totalled 14.5 million acres compared with 16.8 million acres a year earlier. The winter barley area fell to 2.4 acres from 2.7 million.
Winter wheat accounts for about 95 percent of Ukraine's total wheat production.
UkrAgroConsult said this week the state of Ukrainian winter grains was almost unchanged over the last week despite favourable wet and warm weather.
About 87.4 percent of the winter wheat area sown for the 2016 harvest had sprouted as of Dec. 24, compared with 86 percent as of Dec. 17, said UkrAgroConsult on Tuesday.
Weather forecasters have said a cold snap with average temperatures of as low as 14 Celsius degrees below zero is expected in Ukraine in late December and early January, and could affect weaker crops as protective snowfalls are not forecasted.
