Comparative mapping within tribe Andropogoneae recently progressed with the use of heterologous probes. We have constructed RFLP genetic maps for sugarcane and sorghum. The maps are based on a 77 individuals progeny of a selfed modern variety for sugarcane and a population of 110 recombinant inbred lines for sorghum. The two maps comprise more than 100 maize and sugarcane genomic probes and include 51 common loci. They show extensive homology and in most cases, conserved linkage groups show a strong colinearity. Comparison with maize maps illustrates the complex highly duplicated nature of the maize genome. Most of sugarcane and sorghum linkage groups correspond with two or more paralogous maize chromosome segments. Synteny may allow the identification of orthologous quantitative trait loci for biological and agricultural characters among the three crops, and will facilitate the genetic study of the complex genome of sugarcane. (Texte intégral)