The reporting period mainly involves thegrowing and harvesting of wet season crops for this MPZ. The entire zoneexperienced a slight increase (+1%) of rainfall over average, but low rainfallwas recorded for both Bangladesh (‑38%) and India (-3%). The spatialdistribution of rainfall profiles indicates that 65.6% of the area of the MPZreceived average rainfall throughout the monitoring period while 26.6%  received below average rainfall in earlyNovember 2015. Temperature (TEMP: +0.5°C) remained average and there wasno change in the photosynthetically active radiation (RADPAR) for theMPZ. Temperature departure profile follows the same temporal patternthroughout the MPZ as shown in Figure 2.4c.  Temperatures were aboveaverage during the first two dekads but fluctuated widely during the reportingperiod.

The maximum VCIvalues for the MPZ range from 0.5 to 1, indicating average to favorable cropconditions throughout. However, low VCI (< 0.5) was recorded for centralIndia triggered by below average rainfall in Madhya Pradesh (-39%) and Rajasthan(-42%), pointing to poor crop condition in those areas.

The fraction of croparable land (CALF) was 85%, which was 2% below the average. The uncropped areaswere mainly distributed in central Myanmar and in the Indian states of Haryana,Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The biomass accumulationpotential for the MPZ was below average
(-8%), while the spatial distribution shows below average biomass concentrationin central and eastern India, the southern part of Myanmar and some scatteredareas in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Except the southern part of India, theentire country recorded low values of VHI minimum indicating water stress dueto the deficit rainfall.  

Overall, cropcondition of the MPZ is below average primarily due to the rainfall deficit inIndia and Bangladesh.

Figure 2.4. Southand Southeast Asia MPZ: Agroclimatic and agronomic indicators, October2015-January 2016