As many as 55,000 hectares of the 930,000 planned have been sowed so far this spring. The largest part of the area was sowed with barley.

Ivan Guci, head of the Phytotechnique Products Service of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry, has told IPN that about 40,000 hectares have been sowed with barley, 8,700 hectares with pea, over 1,000 hectares with sugar beet, while 5,000 hectares with spring wheat and rape.

Of the 930,000 hectares, 555,000 will be sowed with cereals and spring leguminous plants, 315,000 with such technical crops as sunflower, soybean and sugar beet, while 60,000 hectares with fodder crops, annual herbs, perennial herbs and corn for silage.

The first stage of the spring works includes the fertilization of autumn crops. These works were done on 90% of the fields already. In parallel, the spring crops started to be sowed. The weather favored these works.

According to the general rules, the pea, wheat and barley are sowed immediately after the soil is prepared. Rape and sugar beat are sowed afterward, followed by corn, sunflower and soybean.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry recommends optimizing the areas sowed with sunflower and diminishing them from 260,000-270,000 hectares to at most 200,000-220,000 hectares. The sunflower significantly dries the soil and the land needs to lie fallow after being sowed with this crop.

The reserves of moisture now meet the norm on 75% of the fields.