A local agronomist says crops were damaged in the southeast from frost Sunday morning. Jonathan Friesen is an agronomist with Clearview Co-op. He says Sunday's frost was widespread, impacting fields from Beausejour down to Vita. Friesen says he is hearing reports of temperatures as low as -2 in some areas. Though not the first frost of the season in Southern Manitoba, Friesen says this one certainly touched a larger area. "As far as damage goes, thankfully, it won't be too bad for the most part, just because of how advanced crops are," says Friesen. The two main concerns right now are corn and soybeans. With wheat and canola being harvested as we speak, Friesen says those crops were not impacted by this frost. With respect to soybeans, Friesen says most of the fields are advanced enough that there should not be much damage. He explains that soybeans at R6 or Full Seed stage have pods that are completely filled up, and frost after that is not a big deal. "But any earlier than that, those plants are still filling those pods, and you will see some damage on those later ones, some smaller beans and such for sure," he explains. As for corn, Friesen says it all comes down to how hard the frost was. If it was a light frost as opposed to a killing frost, Friesen says there could still be damage to the top leaves. This can have a negative impact, especially if the corn is still in an earlier stage. "If it's just starting to dent and you get a light frost at that point, hard to say, but you can still get 10 to 20 per cent yield damage on that," he explains. Friesen notes that once you get to the later dent stage, like half milk to two-thirds milk line, there is fairly little damage from frost. He says the extent of damage will depend on factors like plant size and seeding dates. On the silage side, Friesen says frost can impact quality quite a bit, depending on what stage it is at and how quickly a producer is chopping. He recommends talking to a nutritionist and testing the feed for its value. With the frost happening three days ago, Friesen says by now any damage should be noticeable on plants. However, that depends on how hard the frost was in a particular area. He notes a killing frost of -2 will show symptoms that same day. If the temperature only goes down to zero, Friesen says it could take a day or two for symptoms to show up. Meanwhile, Friesen says for the most part, we are only about one to two weeks away from crops in the southeast no longer being susceptible to frost damage. He notes the exception is long-season varieties or later-seeded crops. Environment Canada's seven-day forecast shows no frost for Steinbach.