| Resume |
Maize agronomic traits needed by producers and consumers must be taken into account by breeding programmes. Those traits vary with the target group. In tropical zone, they include earliness, reduced plant and ear heights, resistance to stalk and root lodging, resistance to diseases, weeds and pests, drought tolerance, excellent husk cover, high and stable grain yield, high harvest index and appropriate grain quality. The importance, the inheritance, the heritability and the possibility of improvement of those traits are reviewed. Indications related to the inheritance and the heritabilty of most of the traits have been reported. But, some of them are much debated. Additive, dominance and epistatic gene effects are involved. Some traits are oligogenic whereas others are polygenic. Heritability values reported are low, moderate or high according to trait, population, environment and computation method. Tropical maize populations can be improved for those traits using appropriate methods. |