First published online as a Review in Advance on June 28, 2004 THE GENETICS OF MAIZE EVOLUTION

Key Words Zea, teosinte branched1 (tb1,) teosinte glume architecture1 (tga1), development, domestication ■ Abstract Maize and its closest wild relatives, the teosintes, differ strikingly in the morphology of their female inflorescences or ears. Despite their divergent mor-phologies, several studies indicate that some varieties of teosinte are cytologically indistinguishable from maize and capable of forming fully fertile hybrids with maize. Molecular analyses identified one form of teosinte (Zea mays ssp. parviglumis) as the progenitor of maize. Analyses of the inheritance of the morphological traits that dis-tinguish maize and teosinte indicates that they are under the control of multiple genes and exhibit quantitative inheritance. Nevertheless, these analyses have also identified a few loci of large effect that appear to represent key innovations during maize do-mestication. Remaining challenges are to identify additional major and minor effect genes, the polymorphisms within these genes that control the phenotypes, and how the combination of the individual and epistatic effects of these genes transformed teosint