Introducing water stress tolerance in a public breeding program : criteria and implementation

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: In the last decades, increasing resources use efficiency and crop tolerance to different types of abiotic stress has become a hot topic in agricultural systems. In maize, the anthesis-silking interval (ASI, in days) has demonstrated to be a useful secondary trait because it is highly correlated with improved grain yield in drought-prone environments, has high heritability and can be fast and accurately measured in the field.