ABSTRACT
Advances in cold-tolerant maize varieties Csaba L. Marton and Zsuzsanna Tóthné Zsubori, MTA Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungary
1 Introduction
2 The effect of temperature on maize growth
3 Factors affecting seed quality and germination at low temperatures
4 Cold test methods
5 Germplasm evaluation to improve cold tolerance through breeding
6 Inheritance of cold tolerance
7 Physiological background of chilling tolerance
8 Genetic markers for cold tolerance
9 Summary
10 Future trends in research
11 Where to look for further information
12 References
Maize originates from subtropical regions, probably from the highlands of Mexico (Mangelsdorf 1986), and the newest molecular assays have confirmed this hypothesis (Matsuoka et al. 2002). On the basis of fossil studies, archaeologists also proved that teosinte, the ancestor of maize, was first domesticated in Oaxaca, Mexico (Benz 2005).
