The Genetic Improvement of Forage Grasses and Legumes to Enhance Adaptation of Grasslands to Climate Change

This technical document notes that climate change is likely to shift the adaptive regions of most forage species in the long term. Hence there is a need to identify and incorporate the relevant adaptive traits into existing and new forage species in order to maintain and, where feasible, enhance productivity of grassland systems in the face of the changing environmental constraints imposed upon them. The document firstly briefly summarizes the relevant impacts of climate change and then discusses the opportunities for genetic improvement of forage species with respect to several criteria. It also considers future opportunities with respect to grassland design utilizing state of the art approaches in the context of the broad systems level understanding.