The fraction of green canopy cover (CC) is an important feature commonly used to characterize crop growth and for calibration of crop and hydrological models. It is well accepted that there is a relation between CC and NDVI through linear or quadratic models, however a straight-forward empirical approach, to derive CC from NDVI observations, is still lacking. In this study, we conducted a meta-analysis of the NDVI-CC relationships with data collected from 19 different studies (N = 1397). Generic models are proposed here for 13 different agricultural crops, and the associated degree of uncertainty, together with the magnitude of error were quantified for each model (RMSE around 6–18% of CC). We observed that correlations are adequate for the majority of crops as