Directions of uniform rotundity in direct sums of normed spaces

Let {(X_i,|| · || _i)}_{i ? I},\{(X_i,\left \| {\cdot } \right \| _{i})\}_{i\in I}, be an arbitrary family of normed spaces and let (E,|| · || _E)(E,\left \| {\cdot } \right \| _{E}) be a monotonic normed space of real functions on the set I that is an ideal in \Bbb R^I{\Bbb R}^I. We prove a sufficient condition for the direct sum space E(X_i) to be uniformly rotund in a direction. We show that this condition is also necessary for E=l_￥E=\ell _{\infty }, and it is not necessary for E=l₁E=\ell _1. When E is either uniformly rotund in every direction and has compact order intervals, or weakly uniformly rotund respect to its evaluation functionals, we reestablish as a corollary the result that reads: E(X_i)E(X_i) is uniformly rotund in every direction if and only if so are all the X_i.