Assessment of relative efficiency of using MODIS data to winter wheat yield forecasting in Ukraine

Wheat is one of the most important and grown crops in Ukraine. Enabling reliable and accurate winter wheat yield forecasts several months in advance of the harvest is an important problem. In this paper we assess relative efficiency of using MODIS data to winter wheat yield forecasting in Ukraine at oblast level. Relative efficiency is defined as the ratio between the variance of the sample (in our case the winter wheat yield official statistics) and the variance of the estimate that has been made with the aid of satellite data. Performance of the forecasting models in terms of relative efficiency was dependant on the agroclimatic zone being on average 1.2 for Plane-Polissya, 1.5 for Forest-Steppe, and 1.9 for Steppe.