The monitoring period covers the harvesting stage of secondary rice and maize, as well as the sowing stage of main rice and maize in the Philippines. Crop condition in the country was consistently below average from January to April. Overall, the Philippines experienced a dry and warm season with insufficient moisture supply: rainfall decreased by 41% compared with average, possibly resulting from El Niño conditions, accompanied with increased temperature (+0.6°C) and RADPAR (+6%).As a result of the rainfall deficit, the biomass production potential decreased by 36% compared to average, which is confirmed by the NDVI development graph.According to the NDVI clusters, crop condition in Luzon declined sharply from early-April, as a possible result of cyclone Maysak (see also section 5.2 on disasters). Altogether, the output of the main season is expected to be belowor just average.

Figure 3.24. Philippines 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