In this thesis we study two distinct aspects of toric varieties, one purely geometric, over C, and the other of arithmetic nature, over quasi algebraically closed fields (C1 fields). Extremal curves, which generate the Mori cone of a projective toric variety, are primitive curves (V. Batyrev). In 2009, D. Cox and C. von Renesse conjectured that the classes of primitive curves generate the Mori cone of any toric variety whose fan has full dimensional convex support. We present a family of counterexamples to this conjecture and propose a new formulation based on the notion of local contractibility, generalizing the contractibility defined by C. Casagrande. Using the corridors, a combinatorial tool that we introduce, we show how to write any given 1-cycle class as a linear combination with integer coefficients of toric curve classes. Corridors enable us to give an explicit decomposition of any class that is not contractible (straights corridors) as well as contractible classes in some particular cases (circular corridors). C1 fields are those over which the existence of rational points on a variety Y is ensured by any small degree embedding of Y in a projective space (by definition) or in a weighted projective space (according to an easy theorem of Kollar). For an ample divisor in a toric variety whose fan is simplicial and complete, we show that there is also a notion of small degree which ensures the existence of rational points. This way, we show the existence of rational points on a large class of rationally connected varieties.
