DISTRICT LEVEL WHEAT YIELD ESTIMATION USING NOAA AVHRR NDVI TEMPORAL PROFILE

Using three years (Dec through Apr) data sets, fifteen days interval Integrated NDVI (INDVI) values during 15 Jan - 30 Mar were regressed with yield values. Ludhiana, Karnal and Kurukshetra districts with 68.6 to 75.77% Geographic Area under Agriculture (GAA) and 89.34 to 96% of Agriculture Area under Wheat (AAW) gave minimum estimation error of 5.19%, (r-square=0.82) for 15-29 Jan INDVI segment. With the inclusion of districts of Jind, Faridabad and Sonepat (GAA:61.9-64.4%, AAW:84.08-86.71%) the lowest error was 7.07%, (r-square=0.76) for 15 Jan - 30 Mar INDVI segment while it was 7.89% (r-square=0.72) for 30 Jan-13 Feb INDVI segment. Further inclusion of Hisar and Gurgaon district (GAA: 40.61-40.66%, AAW:80.22-86.49%) gave lowest error of 9.14% (r-square=0.72) for 16-30 Mar segment INDVI, error being 13.33%, 11.70% for 15-29 Jan and 30 Jan-13 Feb segments INDVI respectively. INDVI could enable yield estimation with 60/75 days lead time within 5 to 8% error for district having GAA > 60%.