A lack of rain in Ukraine's central and southern regions has created unfavourable conditions for winter crop sowing, analyst APK-Inform said on Wednesday citing weather forecasters.
Ukraine, a traditional grower of winter crops of wheat, barley and rapeseed, usually starts sowing in the second half of August with winter rapeseed.
"In the southern regions - Mykolayiv, Odessa, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya - in many areas, the moisture reserves of one meter layer of soil have already been completely exhausted," APK-Inform quoted forecasters as saying.
"This year ... the preconditions for sowing are unfavourable," they added.
Ukrainian grain traders union UGA said on Tuesday it revised down its forecast for Ukraine's 2020/21 rapeseed harvest to 2.93 million tonnes from the previous outlook of 3.33 million.
UGA said it had also reduced its estimate for Ukraine's 2020/21 rapeseed exports to 2.65 million tonnes from 3 million.
Ukraine harvested 3.3 million tonnes of rapeseed in 2019.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by David Holmes)
