The harvest of winter wheat in Ukraine started in July and is currently still underway; spring cereals and maize are still growing. Rainfall was well below average (-20%), while radiation slight increased (+1.0%). As illustrated in the section on the Central Europe to Western Russia MPZ (section 2.7), the decrease in potential biomass production potential (as described by BIOMSS) is large in the west of the country (-20%), while the east had favorable conditions with at least average BIOMSS; At the national level, a BIOMSS decrease of 15% is expected. Accordingto the NDVI profiles, crop condition in Ukraine is close to the referencefive-year average with a maximum VCI index of 0.86. According to the spatialNDVI patterns and compared to the last five years, central and eastern areasunderwent favorable conditions in June (including Poltavs'ka, Chernihivs'ka,Sums'ka, and Kharkivs'ka), which is confirmed in the maximum VCI map. The many pixelswith values >1.0 in the VCI map indicate exceptionally good crops in thoseareas. Altogether, the situation of both winter and summer crops has recoveredfrom the poor conditions before; the current expectation is that cropproduction will be close to but below average.

Figure3.30. Ukraine crop condition, April-July2015

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

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