Humidity and hail over the summer may be the cause of some harvest problems in Manitoba sunflower crops.

Troy Turner, agronomist for the National Sunflower Association of Canada, says there were usual cases of sclerotinia, but also more cases of head rot, phomopsis, and phoma. Turner says these diseases come along with the type of weather we had this summer.

"In my mind and from what I'm seeing in fields, we are seeing more of [phomopsis and phoma] this year, and that ends up being breakage. In a lot of cases, there's heads that aren't able to be picked up off the ground with the harvester," he says. "This year a lot of fields took some damage due to either root lodging and/or injury from hail, and we can say some infection potentially came from that, from some different pathogens."

As harvest goes farther into fall, the colder temperatures won't be as much of a concern, however. Turner says most crops are at or past the R9 stage, and a frost below minus four could actually act as natural desiccant.