Of all the kinds of agro-meteorological disasters, drought is the main meteorological disaster affecting crop growth, the maximum damage to agricultural production. A trend of increasing drought in China has been observed due to the global warming. The paper reviews the latest progress in the drought indexes by remote sensing, combined with the characteristics of crop growth cycles, and compares the applicabilities of various drought indexes in different crop growth durations. It is concluded that the drought indexes which are closely related to the soil moisture index are suitable for the prophase of crop growth duration, such as the growth periods, in which the vegetation coverage is low, or not sealing ridge, or soil bareness. The vegetation morphological and physiological drought indexes are more suitable for the agricultural crop growth process, especially after the vegetation sealing ridge and other vegetation coverage higher periods. The applicability of any kindof comprehensive drought index is broad and can be improved to adapt to different crop growth durations, but a large number of parameters need to be calculated to ensure the accuracy, which limits theirs practical application.

agricultural drought  /  remote sensing monitoring  /  drought index