Fodder Crops and Amenity Grasses

Grassland provides the forage basis to feed ruminant animals for the production of meat and milk ever since their domestication. With the introduction of improved crop rotations at the end of the sixteenth century, grasses and legumes began to be also grown to an important extent as forage crops on arable land. In the last decades the importance of amenity grasses increased markedly, due to the demand of the society for new usages like landscape protection. The main role of grasses, clovers and alfalfa in temperate agriculture is still to provide forage for ruminant animals but, in the last decades, the importance of amenity grasses increased markedly and, in the near future, new developments in the areas of energy and biomass use can be envisaged. Fodder Crops and Amenity Grasses, fifth volume in the series, Handbook of Plant Breeding, covers all these aspects.