Published in Nature Communications, a study from Politecnico di Torino and the University of Delaware identifies global regions most vulnerable to agricultural losses due to drought and suggests strategies to mitigate their effects.
Turin, 17 June 2026
Where will drought hit hardest? Which crops are most vulnerable to extreme weather events? And how can agricultural losses be reduced in a world increasingly exposed to the effects of climate change? These questions are addressed by a study by Politecnico di Torino and University of Delaware, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications, presents a new methodological framework for evaluating the vulnerability of major crops to drought on a global scale. This research identifies the areas of the planet that are most at risk of yield losses.
From the 1960s, global food production has tripled, driven mainly by a few high-yield crops such as rice, maize and wheat. However, this growing specialisation has made many agricultural systems less diversified and, in some cases, less resilient to climatic variations. Ensuring global food security therefore means not only increasing production and reducing its environmental impact, but also ensuring that crops can withstand increasingly frequent and intense phenomena, such as drought.
Despite decades of research on the relationship between climate and agriculture, a detailed assessment of the sensitivity of different crops to drought in specific growing regions around the world had been lacking until now. To fill this gap, Marta Tuninetti from Politecnico di Torino and Kyle Davis from the University of Delaware have developed new metrics capable of measuring, with high spatial detail, the extent to which specific crops are affected by water scarcity or high temperatures in different geographical contexts.
The study’s authors then analysed 17 of the world’s major food crops – including rice, maize, wheat and soya – which together constitute around three-quarters of global agricultural production, quantifying patterns of drought sensitivity and the associated yield losses.
One of the most significant findings concerns the different behaviour of irrigated and non-irrigated crops – namely crops requiring artificial water supplies and those relying exclusively on natural rainfall, respectively. During periods of drought, in fact, irrigated crops can continue to receive water via irrigation systems, maintaining stable yields or even increasing them. Crops that depend exclusively on rainfall, on the other hand, are much more vulnerable to extreme weather events.
“Despite the extensive literature on the relationship between drought and agriculture, there has been a lack of detailed understanding of which crops are most sensitive to drought in different regions of the world – explains Marta Tuninetti, researcher at the Department of Environmental, Territorial and Infrastructure Engineering-DIATI at Politecnico di Torino and lead author of the study – Let’s consider, for example, the so-called monsoon crops, such as maize or millet. Our study shows that, by combining two strategies – expanding irrigation where sustainable, i.e., without further lowering of groundwater levels, and replacing certain crops with more resilient varieties – it would be possible to reduce production losses by over 60% during extreme weather events and, at the same time, increase average yields by 14%”.
The study also identified a number of particularly vulnerable areas, defined as ‘drought sensitivity hotspots’, where climatic conditions and the characteristics of the crops grown combine to amplify the risk of agricultural losses. These include certain regions of the US Midwest, eastern Brazil, eastern Spain and central and northern India.
The identification of these hotspots provides a practical tool for guiding agricultural policies and public investment. Governments, international organisations and development agencies can use this information to identify areas where climate adaptation measures are most urgent and effective, concentrating resources where the impacts of drought and associated agricultural production losses can be reduced most significantly.
“Researchers and decision-makers will be able to use this information to test different solutions on a large scale and estimate their benefits – conclude the two authors of the study – This is a scalable methodological framework that allows for the proactive targeting of mitigation actions and investments, with the aim of stabilising and increasing global agricultural supply and developing strategies tailored to the needs of a specific population and a particular location”.
Read the full article at this link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-72715-y
