In the recent years, great progress has been made in the fields of plant molecular biology and genomics, and genomics approaches including molecular marker techniques have been widely used in studies on maize germplasm. The present paper reviews recent advances in the fields related to maize germplasm including origin and evolution of maize, shaping mechanisms and assessment of genetic diversity, and diversity-based gene discovery etc. Finally, the strategies of research on maize germplasm by the use of genomics approaches are proposed.