From March to May 2026, Pakistan's winter wheat was in the grain-filling, maturity, and harvest stages. Integrated agroclimatic remote sensing monitoring results for the full growing season reveal marked spatial heterogeneity in national winter wheat yields, with a statistical mean of 5,243 kg/ha and a high standard deviation of 1,581 kg/ha (Figure 2.20), reflecting the pronounced productivity divergence between irrigated and rainfed areas under season-long drought stress. During the monitoring period, the national cropped arable land fraction (CALF) was 70%, the maximum Vegetation Condition Index (VCIx) was 0.84, and the Crop Production Index (CroPI) was 1.12, all at normal or slightly above-normal baseline levels. Combined with earlier sowing-area monitoring results, national winter wheat sown area was 9,073 thousand hectares, a decline of 2.63% compared with 2025, and production for this season is projected to show a modest decrease.

Looking back at the full-season climate evolution, the 2025–2026 winter wheat growing season was characterized by persistent precipitation deficits and sustained warmer-than-normal temperatures throughout. During the sowing-to-overwintering period (November 2025–January 2026), national cumulative precipitation reached only 24 mm, 37% below normal, directly leading to a narrowing of the sowing window in rainfed areas, a passive contraction of sown area by 2.63%, and setting a production-reduction baseline. In the green-up to heading stage (February–March), the precipitation situation deteriorated further, with cumulative rainfall 50.5% below normal; coupled with average temperatures 1.14°C above normal, national potential biomass plummeted by 26.43% compared with normal. Although end-of-season precipitation during the grain-filling to maturity stage (March–April) recovered to 77 mm, narrowing the departure to –6%, wheat had already passed its critical water-demand period, and the substantive compensatory effect on yield formation was very limited.

Despite the generally unfavorable agroclimatic conditions, the robust irrigation system played a decisive buffering role against drought stress. Full-season VCIx remained consistently in the high range of 0.84–0.88, with February, April, and the current monitoring period all displaying stable performance. The NDVI departure profile shows that, for most of the season, national vegetation greenness ran above the recent five-year average, with only a brief fluctuation in February followed by rapid recovery; by late May, NDVI values had even breached the five-year maximum envelope, which is conjectured to be associated with early emergence of Kharif-season crops utilizing favorable residual soil moisture. In the northern Punjab core production zone, despite the largest precipitation deficit, the full-season VCIx reached as high as 0.93, securing the baseline of national production.

In summary, Pakistan's 2025–2026 winter wheat production was constrained by drought-induced area reduction during the sowing period and a pronounced yield decline in rainfed areas. Although the core irrigated zone exhibited strong production resilience, total output is still expected to decline by 7.6% year-on-year.

Fig. 2.20  Pakistan winter wheat yield distribution map, 2026