Australian crops show generally above average condition during the monitored period from October to January. This period covers the harvesting of winter crops and planting of summer crops. Although rainfall dropped below average (New South Wales: RAIN, -19%; Victoria, -25%; Western Australia, -10%) irrigation makes up for the inadequacy of precipitation. The NDVI profiles also reflect the above average conditions in almost all cropped regions in the country from October to November, with only 11.1% of the cropped land, covering central and northeastern New South Wales, showing below average values in December and January. The maximum VCI reaches an overall value of 0.7 for Australia’s cropped lands.

With the fraction of cropped arable land up 40 percentage points compared to the average of the previous five years, CropWatch estimates that the production of wheat and barley in 2016-17 will increase 24.3% over 2015-16. Table B.2 in Annex B shows CropWatch wheat production estimates for Australia.

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

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