经济发展与资源环境的矛盾及现代玉米产业链的延伸和发展，对育种提出了更高的要求。玉米品种选育朝着优质、高产、抗逆、高效、早熟等方向发展。在边缘化的环境中，干旱、土壤贫瘠和病虫草害等生物与非生物逆境对生产的危害呈加重趋势，培育和种植耐逆性强、水肥利用效率高的品种是实现生产可持续发展和继续提高产量的途径之一。分子育种和转基因技术的发展，使传统育种技术不断改造升级，给新品种选育带来深刻的影响。一些内外因素的冲突对玉米生产与科技发展的影响将越来越强烈。本文简要综述世界玉米育种研究动态，并提出我们的发展对策。

With the sharper than ever conflict between economic and social development and the environment stress, and with the rapid development of modern maize industry, maize breeding program are meeted the demand for modern hybrids with high yield potential, good quality, stress tolerance and early maturity. Development of modern hybrids with stress tolerance and high resources efficiency will be an important aproach to meet the increasing challenges of biotic and abiotic stresses and the sustainable development of maize production in the margional environments. Molectular marker assisted breeding, doubled haploid induction and transgenic techniques will exert a profound influence on the conventional development of maize hybrids in the future. With china entrance WTO, the impacts of the contradictories will be getting severe in the future. The trends of maize breeding in the world were reviewed and the strategies were proposed in this paper.