Global climate change leads to the concurrence of a number of abiotic stresses including moisture stress (drought, waterlogging), temperature stress (heat, cold), and salinity stress, which are the major factors affecting maize production. To develop abiotic stress tolerance in maize, many quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been identified, but very few of them have been utilized successfully in breeding programs. In this context, the meta-QTL analysis of the reported QTL will enable the identification of stable/real QTL which will pave a reliable way to introgress these QTL into elite cultivars through marker-assisted selection. In this study, a total of 542 QTL were summarized from 33 published studies for tolerance to different abiotic stresses in maize to conduct meta-QTL analysis using BiomercatorV4.2.3. Among those, only 244 major QTL with more than 10% phenotypic variance were preferably utilised to carry out meta-QTL analysis. In total, 32 meta-QTL possessing 1907 candidate genes were detected for different abiotic stresses over diverse genetic and environmental backgrounds. The MQTL2.1, 5.1, 5.2, 5.6, 7.1, 9.1, and 9.2 control different stress-related traits for combined abiotic stress tolerance. The candidate genes for important transcription factor families such as ERF, MYB, bZIP, bHLH, NAC, LRR, ZF, MAPK, HSP, peroxidase, and WRKY have been detected for different stress tolerances. The identified meta-QTL are valuable for future climate-resilient maize breeding programs and functional validation of candidate genes studies, which will help to deepen our understanding of the complexity of these abiotic stresses.

全球气候变化导致水分胁迫（干旱、涝）、温度胁迫（热、冷）、盐胁迫等多种非生物胁迫同时存在，是影响玉米生产的主要因素。为了提高玉米的非生物胁迫耐受性，已经鉴定了许多数量性状基因座（QTL），但其中很少有在育种计划中成功利用的。在这种情况下，对所报告的 QTL 进行元 QTL 分析将能够鉴定稳定/真实的 QTL，这将为通过标记辅助选择将这些 QTL 渗入优良品种铺平可靠的途径。本研究从33篇发表的玉米对不同非生物胁迫耐受性的研究中总结出总共542个QTL，并使用BiomercatorV4.2.3进行meta-QTL分析。其中，只有244个表型变异大于10%的主要QTL被优选用于进行meta-QTL分析。总共检测到了 32 个拥有 1907 个候选基因的元 QTL，用于不同遗传和环境背景下的不同非生物胁迫。 MQTL2.1、5.1、5.2、5.6、7.1、9.1 和 9.2 控制不同的胁迫相关性状以实现组合非生物胁迫耐受性。已检测到ERF、MYB、bZIP、bHLH、NAC、LRR、ZF、MAPK、HSP、过氧化物酶和WRKY等重要转录因子家族的候选基因具有不同的胁迫耐受性。所鉴定的元QTL对于未来气候适应型玉米育种计划和候选基因研究的功能验证很有价值，这将有助于加深我们对这些非生物胁迫复杂性的理解。