Only a small area of winter wheat is grown in Kyrgyzstan. Spring crops were planted in April in the southern part. In May, planting will start in the Naryn Region. Among the CropWatch agro-climatic indicators, RADPAR  was slightly above average (+2%), RAIN  was slightly below average (-1%), while TEMP was near average. The combination of the factors resulted in below-average BIOMSS (-3%)  compared to the recent fifteen-year average. As shown by the NDVI development graph, the winter vegetation conditions were generally below average except for early January and early February. The spatial NDVI clustering profile shows that the same trends could be observed for all regions. From mid February to the end of the monitoring period, only 39.4% of the cropped areas had near-average crop conditions, mainly including the middle parts of Issyk-Kul and Naryn regions, southern parts of Jalal-Abad and northern parts of Osh regions. The rest of the regions all had below-average crop conditions till the end of the monitoring period. This situation is confirmed by the VCIx map which shows relative low values (<0.8) distributed across the whole country. The national average VCIx was 0.50, indicating unfavorable crop conditions. The cropped arable land fraction decreased by 55%. However, crop production is dominated by the summer crops in this country and conditions in general are assessed as close to normal due to average rainfall levels. 

Figure 3.25 Kyrgyzstan's crop condition, January - April 2021.

(a). Phenology of major crops

(b) Crop condition development graph based on NDVI

(c) Maximum VCI

(d) Rainfall index

(e) Temprature index

(f) Spatial NDVI patterns compared to 5YA  (g) NDVI profiles