Abstract: In order to enhance the professional capacity of drought monitoring, prediction, assessment and prevention of agricultural and meteorological sectors in maize production, we summarized 7 kinds of maize drought indexes suitable for northeast China, including sliding precipitation, soil moisture in 10-day period, soil rainfall gain and loss rate in 10-day period, soil moisture in different growth periods, water deficit index at various development stages, and plant morphological indicators, and pointed out the applicability characteristics of different indexes and applied the indexes in the risk zoning of maize arid climate in northeast China. Finally, we discussed the problems that should be highlighted in the construction and use of maize drought indexes, indicated that crop drought index should have distinct agricultural meteorological significance, clear mechanism, suitable spatial and temporal scale, suitable business application, and the indexes confusion and blind spatial and temporal average should be avoided.