This monitoring period includes the late stages of sugar beets (October harvest) and the early vegetative stages of soft wheat and winter barley (planted in October). At the national scale, the CropWatch RADPAR indicator for radiation was slightly above average (+3%), but rainfall (RAIN) and temperature (TEMP) were 36% and -3.5°C below average, resulting in a biomass production potential (BIOMSS) drop of 35% below the recent five-year average. 

As shown by the crop condition development graph, national NDVI values were basically below average during the whole monitoring period due to drier-than-usual and colder-than-usual conditions, consistent with a maximum VCI of 0.73 for France overall. Maximum VCI in the west, southwest, and southeast of France was low compared to other regions. The country's spatial NDVI patterns indicate a situation that on the whole is worse than the five-year average (especially in the northeast of the country (3.9% of the area) after December), with the exception of 2.7% of agricultural areas, which includes the southern Midi-Pyrénées, southeast of Languedoc-Roussillon, northeast of Rhone-Alpes, and northeast of Riviera. Generally, the CropWatch indicators point at unfavorable condition for most winter crop areas of France, especially in the north-east (Bourgogne to Lorraine and Alsace).

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

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