Recent rain may have come too late to help yield potential in drought-stricken cereal crops, but it has helped them look better and may still help yield.

Spring crops, especially barley, have stretched in the past fortnight, but this may not yield additional straw.

While yield potential has not been increased, grain fill could benefit now that there is more life in crops.

Most winter crops fared better in the drought and good winter crops down south look promising. But further north, there are winter barley crops on light land that are over 80% dead since the drought.

It is hardly surprising that an abnormal year would result in unusual problems.

While spring crops in thesouth look promising, spring barley still looks thin and ear count measurements report around 750/m2 (75% of normal). But ear size seems bigger, and better than average grain fill would help to plug the yield gap.

Up north, spring crops have more problems. Some thin barley crops have a lot of late green tillers, which could cause problems at harvest. They can slow combining and baling, or cause high moisture or crop rejection due to green grains.

Spring wheat has suffered badly too.

Some crops are very uneven and little more than 40cm tall. Signs of drought are everywhere.

Late frost also caused damage.

This is evident in winter barley as sterile grains and partially sterile ears in wheat, which can be seen in some early patches of winter wheat and some spring wheat.

Damaged heads are 70% to 80% sterile. Frost during ear emergence killed the softest part of the developing ears.

Spring beans are also badly hit in some drought areas. Pod set was badly restricted. Some crops have little more than 20cm of podding zone and barely a dozen pods per plant. But the lowest pods are well off the ground.