Designer Pasture Plants: From Single Cells to the Field

Pasture occupies more land area than any other crop and it of tremendous value as livestock feed. Ryegrasses (Lolium spp.) and white clover (Trifolium repens L.) are among the most important forage plants in the world. The demand for high quality forages continues to grow. Elite pasture plants need to demonstrate tolerance to both biotic and abiotic stresses, including drought-stress, low temperatures, diseases and insect pests, without compromising their forage quality and productivity. Generation of this type of advanced forages is beyond the scope and speed of conventional plant breeding. Functional genomics has greatly increased our understanding of mechanisms that determine the genetic, molecular and biochemical basis of economically important traits in forage plants and allow plants to develop and adapt to a dynamic environment. In the post-genomics era, we need to convert
this information into practical benefits for farmers and the agricultural sector. This has required multi-disciplinary approaches that exploit advances in molecular genetics, functional genomics and computational biology as well as close collaboration with plant breeders. This review discusses recent progress in finding the molecular and biochemical basis of quality traits in white clover and ryegrass which will enable developing transgenic plants with improved forage quality, yield and adaptation to the environment.