Abstract:The discovery of maize drought stress related mutants has great value for finding new important drought-resistance genes. A drought sensitive mutant was detected from the inbred line Zong31 during multiplication in field. The mutant displayed rolled leaves under low-drought condition, and at severe stress the leaves turned to yellow which resulted senescence. The genetic analysis indicated that the mutant trait was controlled by a major single recessive gene, which was designated tentatively as Drought Sensitive (DS). In this study, the rolled leaf phenotype was regarded as a standard for identification of mutants under drought condition. Finally the DS gene was mapped between two SSR markers umc1772 and umc2158 on the maize chromosome 3 using F2 population. The physical distance between these two markers is about 5Mb. These results provide useful information for cloning the target gene and giving the keen insight into functional analysis.