No more than 3% of Russian winter crops failed this season - Russian Agriculture Center

MOSCOW. April 9 (Interfax) - No more than 3% of winter crops in Russia have failed this year, data from the Russian Agriculture Center (Rosselkhoztsentr) showed.

Experts inspected crops by taking block samples from an area of 166,400 hectares, the center reported. There were ice crusts in a number of regions, which creates risks for the future harvest, and root rot also poses a certain threat.

In the Central Federal District, 2.6% of crops perished. In the Kostroma and Tver regions, the plant respiration process was slowed due to the formation of ice crusts.

In the Southern Federal District, 2.7% of the crop area failed, and in the North Caucasus the figure was 1.4%. "Among pathogens, root rot was exhibited in plants in the Chechen Republic. A thin ice crust was found on crops in Kabardino-Balkaria," the report said.

In the Volga Federal District, crop failures averaged 3%. Ice crusts were found on fields in Bashkortostan, Marii El, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, and the Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Saratov and Ulyanovsk regions.

In the Ural Federal District, 1% of crops perished. Ice crust and "negligible" root rot were found in Chelyabinsk Region.

No failed crops were found in winter in Siberia.

Russian farmers planted winter crops for harvest in 2025 on 20 million hectares, Agriculture Ministry data showed.