Monitoring biennial bearing effect on coffee yield using modis remote sensing imagery

The objective of this study was to assess correlations between coffee yield and MODIS derived vegetation indices. We assessed EVI and NDVI MODIS products in the south of Minas Gerais state whose production accounts for about one third of the Brazilian coffee production. Correlations were observed between variations on yield of coffee plots and variations on vegetation indices for pixels overlapping the same coffee plots. The vegetation index metrics best correlated to yield were the amplitude and the minimum values over the growing season. The best correlations were obtained between variation on vegetation indices and variation in yield the following year. In general EVI presented better results than those of NDVI for all vegetation index metrics evaluated. Although correlations were not enough to estimate coffee yield exclusively from vegetation indices, trends properly reflect the biennial bearing effect on coffee yield.