This monitoring period covers the growing and harvesting stages of winter wheat and barley. Compared with average, RAIN was in excess (+16%) for the country, while RADPAR accumulation was decreased (-5%); meanwhile TEMP was average. Compared to the last five-years, BIOMSS was also below average (-5%).

The national NDVI development graph indicates that crop condition was unfavorable in early January, but later gradually improved and peaked in late February, reaching values comparable to the maximum of the past five years. It then deteriorated and was a little below the recent five-year average at the end of April, due tolocal excess precipitation and drought, as mentioned in section 5.2. The lowest maximum VCI values (below 0.5) occur in north Balochistan, south NWFP, andsouth Sindh. According to the NDVI profiles, about 10% (9.9%) of the cropped areas display consistently below average conditions from the beginning of December, much of it in Sindh, especially in the southeast but also the more central areas. On the other hand, about 70% of areas have shown close toaverage conditions. Altogether, crop condition is estimated to be just average and locally above average.

Figure 3.23. Pakistan crop condition, January-April 2015

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

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