The old adage that rain makes grain needs to be amended to include the word “sometimes.”
July rain has been beneficial to some canola and pulse crops but may be too late to help cereal crops, say experts.
Most fields in the drought-stricken region of western Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta received 15 to 40 millimetres of rain July 6-19, according to Agriculture Canada.
“It has certainly been welcome in those areas because they have been the driest,” said Clint Jurke, agronomy director with the Canola Council of Canada.
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It means more seeds and pods for late-seeded canola crops that were in the pre-flowering or early-flowering stage of development.
“If we keep getting a few more showers, then those crops are certainly going to be in pretty good shape by the end of the season,” he said.
Late-seeded crops and those that had patchy germination because of extreme drought or frost were likely too far gone to be rescued.
“But for the great majority of canola within that region, (the rain) did come in time,” said Jurke.
Canola fared better than cereals because it has the ability to adapt, fill out and add more seeds even at this advanced stage of the growing season.
“It has more of an indeterminate growth habit, meaning that it can continue flowering, it can continue putting out more pods in response to favourable environmental conditions,” he said.
Derek Squair, president of Agri-Trend Marketing, agreed that canola was the biggest beneficiary of scattered showers followed by more widespread rain in the driest areas of the Prairies.
Yields were also bolstered by the cool conditions that immediately followed the much-needed precipitation.
He is forecasting 13.5 million tonnes of Canadian canola production based on an average yield of 31.2 bushels per acre. The crop would have been about one million tonnes smaller if the rain hadn’t arrived when it did, he added.
Manitoba is looking at a record or near-record canola crop, Saskatchewan’s should be about average and Alberta is still wrestling with a poor crop.
Squair said pulse crops should also benefit from the July precipitation, although to a lesser degree than canola.
However, the rain came too late to help the wheat, barley and durum crops, especially in eastern Alberta.
The head size for cereal crops is established at the flag leaf stage of development, which occurred about three weeks to one month ago.
Bruce Burnett, weather and crops specialist with CWB, agreed cereal yields were set long before the rain arrived.
“You needed to get the rains by the middle of June. We didn’t get them until July,” he said.
However, the precipitation did plump up the seeds that were already there.
“These rains help because it does fill out (the seed) and that does add to the yield a little bit because it adds more weight to the kernels,” said Burnett.
He agreed that canola and pulses will reap the biggest rewards. In the case of pulses, it will more likely benefit a drought-tolerant crop like lentils more than peas, which are in the later stages of maturity.
The rain also likely helped crop quality, although it is too early to make any prognostications on quality.
Squair said cereal crops are about 10 days ahead of average for crop maturity, which lessens the risk of fall frost damage, but harvest rains could still wreak havoc with the crop.
Canola crops are likely a few days behind cereal crops because of the prolonged flowering period, but still about seven days ahead of normal.
Burnett said there was not enough rain to fully recharge soil moisture for next year’s crop.
“It’s a good start, but the moisture deficits are so large that we’ve developed over the season that we’re going to need more,” he said.
If the precipitation continues in August, he expects to see a recovery in winter cereal plantings on ground where growers were unable to plant a spring crop.
