The series of Maize Research Atlas produced by CIMMYT's Natural Resources Group (NRG) and Maize Program, contain spatial data including climate, soils, elevation, population, land use and maize mega-environments for Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and all of Mexico, Central and South America. In addition, climate similarity maps for dozens of major maize research sites in each region are provided. All data are stored as ESRI shapefiles, and MapExplorer (v. 2.0) - developed by ESRI, UK, has been included for data display and query. Each Atlas provides a compendium of more than 150 layers of digital data on climate, soils, elevation, land use, population, and a range of maize-related information for the target region in a stand-alone, CD format.

The Atlases are targeted towards users with no geographic information system (GIS) experience, and each contains from 80 to more than 140 pre-designed MapExplorer projects, along with a tutorial to introduce new users to MapExplorer and the data. Among other uses, the Atlas will allow researchers to characterize regions of interest and target and predict the potential impacts of promising germplasm or agronomic practices. The Atlas requires Microsoft Windows 95 (or higher) or Windows NT (4.0 or higher), as well as 30 Mb of disk space to run MapExplorer.