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Crop monitoring for food security: South and East Mediterranean countries situation at the end of Jul 2006 - Agro-meteorological overview for summer crops

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Introduction

The present Bulletin is dedicated to the analysis of the agro-meteorological situation in the non-European countries of the Mediterranean basin during the period from the beginning of April to the end of July 2006. This is a period for summer crops development. Summer crops are irrigated practically everywhere. The Bulletin is devoted to the analysis of the agro-meteorological conditions for the main summer irrigated field crops used by population for food - rice and maize.

The monitoring of the agro-meteorological situation is based on the analysis of the following dekadal data: minimal, maximal and average air temperature, sums of precipitation and global radiation, dekadal values of the climatic water balance, dekadal maps of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Indexes (NDVI), dekadal maps of the Dry Matter Production. Meteorological data are derived from the outputs of the numerical meteorological model from ECMWF (UK), and were prepared for analysis by METEOCONSULT (NL). SPOTVEGETATION data were used as a basis for calculation of the remote sensing indicators of crop growth. Data were preprocessed by VITO (BE). After that, dekadal maximal NDVI values were weighted for pixels within which winter crops are cultivated, and then - were weighted again at country level. Thus, weighted NDVI values were used as an indicator of crop status. Dry Matter Production maps were calculated by VITO based on SPOT-VEGETATION data and information about global radiation, applying the Monteith approach.

The Bulletin has the following structure. The first pages contain the main results of the analysis. The following pages are dedicated to the analysis of separate indicators of the crop growth during the period of analysis.

The background information is given in the following table.

Country
Production and Yield in 2005
(FAOSTAT data, last accessed 03.08.2006)
rice
maize
production,
1000 tons
yield,
t/ha
production,
1000 tonst/ha
yield,
t/ha
Algeria
0,3
1,5
1,0
3,3
Egypt
6200,0
9,5
6800,0
8,1
Israel
no data
no data
80,0
16,0
Jordan
no data
no data
13,1
22,7
Lebanon
no data
no data
3,4
3,6
Libya
no data
no data
3,6
2,4
Morocco
16,9
7,3
224,1
0,9
Palestine Auth.
no data
no data
no data
no data
Saudi Arabia
no data
no data
43,7
4,0
Syria
no data
no data
180,0
3,6
Tunisia
no data
no data
no data
no data

This is a Bulletin prepared by the MARS-FOOD Action, Agriculture & Fisheries Unit, IPSC, Joint Research Centre, European Commission.