During this monitoring period, only winter crops like wheat and rapeseed were in the field, mostly in the north of the region, including parts of Hubei, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. Limited winter crops were planted in Fujian, the southern Jiangxi and Hunan provinces.
According to the CropWatch agro-climatic indicators, the accumulated precipitation was 19% below the average. Temperature and photosynthetically active radiation were 1.0℃ and 7% higher than the 15-year averages, respectively. The drought conditions caused a negative departure of the biomass production potential by 10%. The rainfall profile indicates that the precipitation in late November exceeded the maximum in 15 years, but the precipitation in other periods was mostly lower than the average.
As shown in the NDVI development graph, crop conditions were below the 5-year average throughout this period. 51.1% of the region, mainly in the northern part, including Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan, northern Jiangxi and northern Hubei, had slightly below-average crop growth until late November, after which the crops improved to average. The potential biomass departure in this part had values between -20% and +20%. Crop growth in the rest of the region also started to improve in December and gradually approached the average level. The average VCIx of this region was 0.84. Most of Jiangsu had VCIx values ranging from 0.8 to 1, the other parts had VCIx values ranging from 0.5 to 1.
In general, the crop conditions in the Lower Yangtze region were close to average.
Figure 4.8 Crop condition China Lower Yangtze region, October 2022 – January 2023
(a) Crop condition development graph based on NDVI (b) Spatial NDVI patterns compared to 5YA (c) NDVI profiles
(d)Time series rainfall profile (e)Time series temperature profile
(f) Maximum VCI (g) Biomass departure