For field crops, the agricultural year 2021 starts at the end of March or the start of April, while for fruit trees and vine it started earlier, Vasile Șarban, division head at the Ministry of Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment, stated for IPN.

According to Vasile Șarban, the autumn agricultural works were performed on time. There were sowed 401,000 ha of farmland, as in the autumn of 2019. Winter wheat was sowed on about 318,000 ha, barley on 47,000 ha, rape on 34,000 ha, while other agricultural crops on about 2,000 ha. The crop fields in 2020 were similar in area, but they were affected by the drought of 2019.

The functionary noted they received no complaints about damage caused to crops by the frosts of minus 20 degrees Celsius witnessed in the second half of this February. Those frosts weren’t critical for crops. “The critical resistance temperature for winter crops is -17, -18 degrees Celsius at the node that is 20 cm above the ground. This temperature is by 5-6 degrees Celsius higher than the temperature at the surface of the ground. The frosts could have yet affected winter wheat crops at the surface of the ground in parts. Even if the aerial part of the plants was affected, the roots are resistant and can develop,” stated Vasile Șarban.

Svetlana Mironov, the head of the agro-meteorological monitoring division of the State Hydrometeorological Service, said that at the beginning of the vegetation period, the reserves of productive moisture will be of 110-175 mm in the one-meter deep layer of soil on winter crop fields. This is 80-135% of the norm. Currently, the moisture reserves in the northern districts of the country are of 90-135% of the norm, in the central districts – of 80-120%, while in the southern districts – of 80-100%. The situation is currently better than a year ago.