Maize cultivars with native insect resistance – potential, advances, and challenges

The development of resistant cultivars is one of the strategies applied in pest control. The method has the advantages of reduced cost and the lack of unwanted effects on the environment. Over the past decades, significant effort has been made toward developing the natural maize resistance to pests by evaluating germplasm and cultivar selection. This review highlights a maize breeding program, potential, advances, and challenges in addressing these characteristics. Also, it describes the main components and procedures applied in the mass rearing of insect pests of maize, artificial diets, techniques of artificial infestation employed in genotype selection, and methods to evaluate the mechanisms and causes of resistance. Studies on the inheritance of resistance, the breeding methods, and the potential for integrating classical and transgenic resistance are also emphasized.