A REVIEW ON VARIOUS FACTORS WHICH AFFECTING SUSTAINABLE MAIZE (Zea mays L.) PRODUCTION UNDER DROUGHT STRESS

Abstract

Maize is an essential dietary component in human food and in animal feed formulation throughout the world. With the rising trend of global climate change, grain yield and quality losses of maize are expected to increase, because of various biotic and abiotic stress in all over the world. Among these, drought is most considerable one; it remarkably influences the growth and yield traits of maize. Hence, improve of drought tolerant in maize genotypes have potential to stabilize, and even though increases the grain yield of maize. Therefore, developing cultivars tolerant to drought stress is a challenge for breeders. There are two ways to mitigate drought stress in maize production, either by developing and practicing improved drought management practices, or by developing and using drought-tolerant cultivars. Even though researchers in all over the world are trying to develop maize genotypes those are tolerant to drought stress; however, a effective breeding program is required to develop and detect the drought-tolerant traits. Therefore, the present review aim to address the adverse effect of drought stress on growth, yield traits, physiological and biochemical process of maize. It also attempts to identify the survival mechanism under drought stress for genetic improvement of maize. The present revi533ew also try to find out the effect of plant growth regulators, enzymatic antioxidants especially osmoprotectants and fertilizer (organic and inorganic) on the morphological, physiological as well as chemical process of plants for better adaptation under harsh environments.