Manitoba's winter wheat crop is off to a good start.

Ken Gross is an agrologist with Ducks Unlimited.

"We're excited about winter wheat," he said. "The acres are actually going back up again after a long decrease. There's a lot better varieties out there. More winter hardy, higher yielding. It looks like there was more acres seeded this fall again. The seed dealers were saying they were all sold out and every field I looked at this fall looked excellent going into the winter, so I'm excited about that."

Gross says the fall rains really helped the winter wheat crop.

"It did help to get the crop off to a good start and most of the fields went into the winter with at least that three leaf and the tiller, which means that's it's going to be very winter hardy. The varieties they're using now, have very good hardiness too, like Wildfire. I'm thinking that they went into winter in great shape."