Efforts in Maize (Zea mays L.) Breeding for Coping With Multiple Stresses in Sub-Saharan Africa

Millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) depend on maize as their primary source of calories and income. To keep on feeding the fast-growing population and facing the challenges of the changing climate, there is a need to look for different technological advancements to bridge the yield and quality gaps of this vital crop through breeding and improved management. As most of the maize farmers in Africa are small-scale with small (on average <= 1 ha), fragmented and degraded plots of land, increasing production per hectare has been suggested to be the preferred approach to uplift the total production. This can be achieved using improved technologies, including the development and dissemination of crop hybrids, which combine better yields under multiple stresses. The development and deployment of maize hybrids in SSA began in the early 1950s. Consequently, many hybrids have been released for production in most countries of the region. However, the extent and rate of adoption have been low and slow, which can be attributed to several factors including lack of resilient genetics, which perform under the changing climate and the associated multiple biotic and abiotic stresses. Evaluation of hybrids has been done by public institutions and private seed companies under optimal and stress growing conditions using different physiological, molecular, genetics and genomics protocols. In this article, attempts have been made to review the efforts made, the successes achieved, the challenges faced and the opportunities set forward to improve maize yields over decades in SSA, through conventional and state-of-the-art breeding approaches for coping with multiple biotic and abiotic stresses.