Cereal yields knocked by lack of sunshine

Farm business consultants Strutt & Parker said that limited sunshine hours and heavy rain during grain filling and flowering has had a very detrimental impact on the region’s cereal production, further damaged by fusarium infections.

Simon Graves, agronomist in Strutt & Parker’s Northallerton office, said: “Light availability during the grain fill period is essential for ear and leaf photosynthesis which determine grain weight. However, sunshine hours during the grain filling months of June and July were significantly down this year.

“We had 52 hours less sunshine in June and 129 hours less in July, in comparison to last year. To put it in perspective, there were more sunshine hours in January than there were in July.”

The impact of heavy rain can also be seen during flowering with a reduction in the number of florets fertilised and consequently restricting the number of grains per ear, said Mr Graves.