Plant Introduction in Forage Crops-Achievements and Opportunities

Abstract

Introduction ofnew germplasm offorage crops is highly
important because of complex breeding behaviour of
forage grasses and legumes. The fodder crops suffer
from a lot of problems unique to these groups and
are generally not encountered in the cultivated crops.
Some of the general constraints faced with forage
production and improvement include non synchronous
flowering/ anthesis and spikelets maturity, abscission
of spikelets after maturity in grasses, overlapping of
vegetative and reproductive growth phases, uneven pod
setting, maturity and shattering in legume species.
In addition, apomictic nature of most of tropical forage
grasses limits their genetic improvement. Hence,
introduction of superior cultivars only offer logical
approach for their genetic improvement.