The origin and evolution of maize and its introduction into South-Eastern Europe

Abstract

The origin and evolution of maize has been attracting attention of researchers of different profiles for decades. Although a few researchers in our country have explicitly been dealing with these issues, it is necessary to survey studies within this field. Not only because of educational reasons, but also because revealing secrets on the origin and evolution provides knowledge about maize genome, which can influence the improvement of current breeding of this very important crop. The enhancement of genetic variability of commercial material is another crucial challenge faced by maize breeders. Therefore, a segment of this study is a reminder indicating that collected and described landraces conserved in the genebank of the Maize Research Institute 'Zemun Polje' are germplasm valuable to breeding programmes intended for moderate climate. Some inbred lines (ZPPE25-10-1; NS796; R70Ž; NS568) developed in our scientific institutions using adapted landraces were of a great commercial importance for maize breeding programmes. However, little has been done on the improvement of landraces. Consequently, it is our opinion that some breeding efforts should be aimed at this topic in order to provide further progress in the maize breeding improvement.

Keywords

• domestication
• evolution
• maize
• plant introduction
• teosinte