The harvest of the 2015 main maize crop and the planting of the secondarymaize as well as winter wheat were underway in Mexico during the reportingperiod. According to the crop condition development graph based on NDVI (Figure3.20), crop condition was average from October to early December 2015 and closeto the five-year maximum between late December 2015 and early January 2016, .

The CropWatch agroclimatic indicators show that rainfall and temperatureincreased respectively by 21% and 0.5°C when compared to the average whileRADPAR decreased by 6%. The BIOMSS was far above average, with an increase of49%. The value of maximum VCI was 0.81 at the national scale, with the highestvalues (0.8-1.0) occurring in southern, south-eastern and western Mexico, asindicated by the maximum VCI graph (Figure 3.20b). This pattern is consistentwith that of NDVI profiles: 64.3% of crops were above or near average.

Considering the high values for NDVI and BIOMSS, above average cropoutput is expected. 

Figure3.20. Mexico crop condition, October2015-January 2016

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

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