The planting of winter wheat in Ukraine concluded by mid-October and is currently in itsdormancy period. Rainfall and radiation were slightly above average.

As illustrated in the section on the Central Europe to Western Russia MPZ, the decrease in potential biomass potential (asdescribed by BIOMSS) is large in the southeast part of the country (-20%), whilepart of northwest and some patches in the southeast had favorable conditions with good average BIOMSS (>20%).

At the national level, a BIOMSS increase of4% is expected. According to the NDVI profiles, crop condition in Ukraine isclose to the reference five-year average with a maximum VCI index of 0.66.According to the spatial NDVI patterns and compared to the five-year average,southern and eastern areas of the country underwent unfavorable conditions(except for limited favorable patches) while northern, western and some centralareas of the country showed favorable conditions in December through January,which is confirmed in the maximum VCI map (Figure 3.30). The pixels with values>1.0 in the VCI map indicate good crops in those areas.

Altogether, the situation of both autumn and winter crops has recovered from the poor conditions in the northwest but the situation is still poor in the south-eastern part of the country. The current expectation is that crop production will be close to or below average.

Figure3.30. Ukraine crop condition, October2015-January 2016

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

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