TITLE:
Breeding for Drought Tolerance in Maize (Zea mays L.)
AUTHORS:
Abdoul-Raouf Sayadi Maazou, Jialu Tu, Ju Qiu, Zhizhai Liu
KEYWORDS:
Maize (Zea mays L.), Drought Stress, Anthesis-Silking Interval, Breeding
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.7 No.14,
September
29,
2016
ABSTRACT: Drought, like many other environmental stresses, has
adverse effects on crop yield including maize (Zea mays L.). Low water availability is one of the major causes for
maize yield reductions affecting the majority of the farmed regions around the
world. Therefore,
the development of drought-tolerant lines becomes increasingly more important.
In maize, a major effect of water stress is a delay in silking, resulting in an
increase in the anthesis-silking interval, which is an important cause of yield
failures. Diverse strategies are used by breeding programs to improve drought
tolerance. Conventional breeding has improved the drought tolerance of
temperate maize hybrids and the use of managed drought environments, accurate
phenotyping, and the identification and deployment of secondary traits has been
effective in improving the drought tolerance of tropical maize populations and
hybrids as well. The contribution of molecular biology will be potential to
identify key genes involved in metabolic pathways related to the stress
response. Functional genomics, reverse and forward genetics, and comparative
genomics are all being deployed with a view to achieving these goals. However,
a multidisciplinary approach, which ties together breeding, physiology and molecular
genetics, can bring a synergistic understanding to the response of maize to water
deficit and improve the breeding efficiency.