Maize ideotype breeding for changing environmental conditions

The demand for corn in the developing world will double by the end of 2050. The challenges due to the climate change are real. Where extreme weather events will become more frequent and climate change projections suggest that large yield losses occur in many regions of the world. Corn is cultivated throughout the world and is a strategic crop: can tolerate high radiation intensities and exhibits high efficiency in the use of water. A framework is needed to design maize ideotypes for site specific condition with the definitions of past, present and future environmental history, and the response of the local material using empirical or mechanistic modeling. The ideotype is a combination of different types of biological traits or the genetic basis that confer enhanced performance for a particular biophysical environment, specific cropping system and end use of the crop. Studies of genotype performance under climate variability always shows that a single trait will never improve plant performance in all climatic scenarios and similarly a single genotype will not cope with all the existing climatic variability. In the past, ideotyping was based on visual and growth phenotypes, but future ideotyping trend will focused more on the knowledge of the genotype. In the future, the strategies for ideotipificacion will be based on strong biotechnological techniques facilitated by the bioinformatics, filling gaps in the current knowledge and overcoming the climatic change challenges and increased the world population. Key words: Maize, ideotype, climate change.