The period covered by this bulletin is of relevance for winter/spring rice in Vietnam. The crop condition changed from above average to below average and divided the whole monitoring period into two phases. As can be seen from the results of the agroclimatic indicators and biomass monitoring, Vietnam suffered from a 6% drop of rainfall compared to the five-year average, while air temperature and PAR accumulation were comparable to that same period’s average. The inadequate rainfall led to a 16% decrease in biomass accumulation for rainfed crops. Crop conditions was much better than average (compared to the recent five years) until mid-February, after which the crops showed below average condition in March and April. This is also confirmed by the profiles of NDVI: crop condition changed from above average to below average in February. The NDVI profiles also show that more than 60% of crop skept balance with the recent five-year, which coincides with the distribution of maximum VCI values greater than 0.8. The production of 2013/14 winter and spring rice is expected to be at least fair.

(a) Crop condition development graph based on   NDVI                                      (b) Maximum VCI

(c) Spatial NDVI patterns compared to 5YA                                                 (d) NDVI profile