This paper reviews the state of knowledge on maize - climbing bean intercropping from an ecophysiological perspective. Starting from the revision of evaluated variables in the consulted investigations and classifing them within three categories: descriptive, explanative and conditional variables. This classification provides elements to argue that researches have been more descriptive than explanative. Many studies describe both association effects and conditionals variables, such as genotypes and population densities, while few studies focus on the mechanisms that explain the effects. The few investigations on mechanisms studies performance of morphological and yield components of both species within the association, and they give few importance to the growing and development. Within the association, bean is the specie most affected; however, it has high morphophysiological plasticity that gives it advantages in the association. The knowledge of these mechanisms may add to understanding of association performance and the selection of genotypes and population densities, and in this way, it may to contribute of the improvement of the intercropping maize-bean.