Abstract:
Maize is an essential dietary component in human food and in animal feed formulation. 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 growth and yield traits of maize. Hence, the improvement of drought tolerant
maize genotypes has 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 review also noticed that plant growth regulators, on enzymatic antioxidants especially
osmoprotectants as exogenous applications and soil amendments of fertilizer (organic and
inorganic) can also modify the morphological, physiological as well as chemical process of
plants for better adaptation under harsh environments
