Southern rust is one of the major diseases for maize in China. Deployment of resistant varieties is one of the most environment-friendliy and cost-saving methods. However, resistance genes used in current breeding programs mainly originated from the hybrid 78599. Inheritance of the resistance of CML470, a inbred line developed in CIMMYT, to southern rust was studied to identify novel resistance genes. Genetic analysis showed that the resistance of CML470 was controlled by a dominant gene (named as RppC), which was mapped to an interval on the terminal of chromosome 10 short arm flanked by closest SSR markers umc1380 and umc1291 with a distance of 3.5 cM and 8.8 cM, respectively. The resistance gene RppC was transferred from the inbred line CML470 to the elite line Chang7-2 by backcross with the aid of molecular marker- assisted selection.