The monitoring period coincides with Mexico’sdry season and almost all the summer crop have been harvested. Rainfall wassignificantly lower than the thirteen-year average (-23%); temperature and PARwere near average. The maximum VCI in the southern region of Mexico is muchabove the five-year average, indicating good crop growing condition, even ifvalues remained below the five-year maximum value. Compared with the lastfive-year average, 38.2% of crop areas display relatively good growingcondition, 48.5 percent shows average growing condition, while 13.3 percentshows an inferior condition. The rainy season of Mexico is about to start;abundant rainfall is needed to offset the deficit over the monitoring period.

Figure3.20. Mexico crop condition, Jan-Apr 2014

(a) Crop condition development graph based onNDVI            (b) Maximum VCI

(c) Spatial NDVI patterns comparedto 5YA          (d) NDVI Profile