South and Southeast Asia includes India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam. The main crops are maize, rice, wheat and soybean.

During this monitoring period, rainfall was 14% above average. Abnormally high rainfall was observed in India in October, but it has obviously regional differences. With sufficient precipitation and another normal agro-climatic indicator (RADPAR -1%), conditions during the grain filling period of rice in India and the sowing of wheat were favorable.  Starting from November, rainfall was close to average in all regions. Temperature was normal (20.5°C, -0.1°C) on the whole, but there were some fluctuations in December and January in Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, where the temperatures were 2.5ºC above average. This is consistent with the low VHI values in this area.

CALF reached 98% in the MPZ, 4% above the five-year average. Uncropped areas mainly occurred in India. VCIx reached 1.0 and the VCIx map shows that high values (>1.0) were concentrated in India and low values (0.5-0.8) mainly in southeast Asian countries. BIOMASS had the same trend as the VCIx map. It showed a marked discrepancy between South Asia and Southeast Asian countries. It was higher in India than in the Southeast Asian countries, where the lower biomass was also reflected on the VHI map. The VHI map shows that those countries experienced stress, presumably in October. In general, crops in south Asia had a better growing environment. Conditions are generally favorable.

a. Spatial distribution of rainfall profiles  b. Profiles of rainfall departure from average (mm)

c. Spatial distribution of temperature profiles   d. Profiles of temperature departure from average (℃)

e. Maximum VCI      f. Cropped arable land 

g. Biomass accumulation potential departure  h. VHI minimum