Drought risk assessment of millet and its dynamic evolution characteristics: A case study of Liaoning Province, China

[Display omitted] •Fitting drought intensity and yield loss rate to construct sensitivity curves.•Considering millet planting climatic suitability as a potential exposure index.•A perfect index system suitable for millet drought risk assessment was built.•Distribution and dynamic migration characteristics of millet drought risk were analyzed. Due to the improvement of living standards and the adjustment of dietary structure, the cereal industry shows excellent growth prospects. Clarifying millet drought risk distribution and determining its dynamic evolution characteristics are therefore of great importance for guiding millet production, preventing drought risks, and ensuring food security. In this study, SPRI was used to identify millet drought, and drought intensity-yield loss rate curves were constructed to characterize millet drought sensitivity. The potential exposure of millet was explored by considering millet climatic suitability and farmland proportion. In light of this, a comprehensive assessment of millet drought risk in different growth periods was made using natural disaster risk theory. The results showed that: (1) The sensitivity model for each growth period had passed the F-test of α = 0.05 (R2 were 0.544, 0.408 and 0.347 respectively), reaching a significant level, which proved that the model can be used to assess millet drought sensitivity. (2) More than 70 % of Liaoning Province had a suitable climatic environment for millet production. Combined with the farmland proportion, the area with high potential exposure was distributed in the central region of Liaoning. (3) The millet drought risk in different growth periods showed a characteristic distribution of high in the northwest and low in the southeast. Among them, Chaoyang had the largest high and extremely high drought risk area in the three growth periods, accounting for 92.11 %, 99.34 % and 98.86 % respectively. At the same time, the center-of-gravity model shows that the barycenter of millet drought risk has a trend of spreading from the west of Liaoning to the northeast and southwest. To sum up, the millet drought risk area in Liaoning may increase in the future, measures should be taken to prevent and mitigate millet drought from three aspects: before, during and after the disaster.