The wildfire season has started early and aggressively in Canada's west and north. The immediate danger is to those under evacuation order, of course, but the wide-spread smokey conditions also impact air quality and crop yield, too.
Overcast conditions, including smoke-filled skies, do lower the amount of sunlight that crop leaves intercept, and that can have a significant impact on crop productivity, says Peter "Wheat Pete" Johnson.
For cereal crops, such as wheat, extremely dense smoke during the early growing season can impact the size of the head that's formed. In that case, even if conditions improve during anthesis and grain fill, there are still only so many spikelets created early on. Canola and soybeans are somewhat more elastic in yield potential, but smokey conditions at flowering or grain fill can lower total yield.
It's also possible that herbicides that work best with hot, sunny days may be less effective if smoke-cover is present at spray time, he says.
