| 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 last few decades, thanks to the wide use of molecular marker technology and genomics approaches, complex genetic mechanisms involved in drought tolerance of maize have been gradually understood. One of the important research advances is the general understanding of the chromosomal locations and the genetic effects of quantitative trait loci (QTL) significantly contributing to drought tolerance of maize throught the mapping and tagging of these QTL. The results obtained so far have provided the sound basis for the marker-assisted selection and further researches. This paper reviews the related research advances on QTL analysis of maize drought tolerance made in the past decade. The trends in the field of QTL analysis of drought tolerance of maize and the critical issues related are also discussed. The construction of universal linkage maps, the combination of QTL analysis with functional genomics, the use of novel QTL analysis methods and the cloning of QTL for drought tolerance will be emphasized or prioritized in the future development. |