Integration of Physiological and Molecular Approaches in Maize Breeding for Drought Tolerance

Drought is one of the disastrous limiting factors for maize production in the world including China.The development of maize hybrids with drought tolerance and high water use efficiency is an effective approach to solving the problem.In the past decades,considerable progress has been made in maize breeding for drought toler-ance using conventional methods,but with low breeding efficiency due to various causes.Meanwhile,physiological and biochemical studies on drought tolerance in maize have obtained a large amount of knowledge and information which can guide practical breeding programs.Particularly,in-depth genetic dissection of drought tolerance in maize using molecular markers and genomics approaches has been carried out in the past decade,which generated the knowledge to be used in molecular breeding.The present paper reviews and discusses the advances and the trends in related fields of breeding for drought tolerance in maize.