The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on wheat yield in El Sharkia Governorate, Egypt

Abstract

The Corona pandemic limits human activities at a time when the world is facing challenges in food safety. Wheat is foremost cereal crop grown healthy in Egypt, especially in El Sharkia Governorate. The target of this work is to monitor wheat cultivation in El Sharkia Governorate during COVID-19 pandemic. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) estimates were made by band 4 and band 5 of Landsat-8 images of 2018, 2019 and 2020. At the start of May 2020 a field visit was made to 50 sites cultivated with wheat to find out their yield and collecting soil samples. The Yield with NDVI was shown to have a strong relationship (R2 = 0.84). The NDVI maps of 2018, 2019 and 2020 were produced using ENVI 5.3 software. The changes in wheat cultivation during 2018–2020 were analyzed and discussed in detail. Decrement in wheat yield was noticed in 2020 due to the lack of production requirements owing to the pandemic.

Keywords

• Landsat-8
• NDVI
• COVID-19
• El Sharkia
• Egypt