This report’s monitoring period covers 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 was average but TEMP and rainfall decreased by 0.9°C and 27% below average, resulting in a BIOMSS drop of 18% below the recent five-year average. As shown by the NDVI profiles, however, national NDVI values were well above average and even above the five-year maximum from early November to January,consistent with a maximum VCI of 0.91 for France overall. The country's spatial NDVI patterns indicate a situation that on the whole is better than the five-year average, except in 27.4% of agricultural areas (3.6% + 23.8%) regions, including most of Limousin, Poitou-Charentes, Auvergne and north of Midi-Pyrenees, most of Lorraine and Alsace and east of Rhone-Alpes, which were influenced by water stress. Generally, the agronomic indicators mentioned above indica

Figure 3.13. France cropcondition, October 2015-January 2016

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

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