Grassland outlines our current understanding of this complex ecosystem, the ways in which it can be enhanced and utilised and where the research challenges are for the future.

Grassland covers:

• Efficient production from grassland
• Grassland and the environment
• Delivering the benefits from grassland

The reader is given an in depth understanding of the biology of the system and how grasslands are crucial for soil stabilisation and water quality. Attention is also given to how grasslands offer the possibility of increasing food supply and income generation. Approaches for achieving the most effective development and adoption of new technology are reviewed

Contents

Efficient production from grassland

• Grassland in Ireland and the UK
• Rising demand for meat and milk in developing countries: implications for grasslands-based livestock production
• Improving the quality of products from grassland>
• Grass and forage improvement: temperate forages
• Grass and forage plant improvement in the tropics and sub-tropics
• Foraging behaviour and herbage intake in the favourable tropics/sub-tropics
• Interactions between foraging behaviour of herbivores and grassland resources in the eastern Eurasian steppes
• Strategies to mitigate seasonality of production in grassland-based systems
• Overcoming seasonality of production: opportunities offered by forage conservation technologies
• Evolution of integrated crop-livestock production systems
• Adoption of tropical legume technology around the world: analysis of success
• Grasses as biofactories: scoping out the opportunities
• The potential of grassland and associated forages to produce fibre, biomass, energy or other feedstocks for non-food and other sectors: new uses for a global resource

Grassland & the environment

• Grasslands for production and the environment
• Soil microbial community: understanding the belowground network for sustainable grassland management
• Soil quality assessment and management
• Water resources, agriculture and pasture: implications of growing demand and increasing scarcity
• Grassland productivity and water quality: a 21st Century issue
• Global atmospheric change and its effect on managed grassland systems
• Grazing land contributions to carbon sequestration
• Methane and nitrous oxide emissions from grazed grasslands
• Relationships between biodiversity and production in grasslands at local and regional scales
• Enhancing grassland biodiversity and its consequences for grassland management and utilisation

Delivering the benefits from grassland

• Grassland and forage to improve livelihoods and reduce poverty
• Participatory approach to common use grazing management in dry area developing countries
• Adoption of Brachiaria grasses in Mexico and Central America: a successful story
• Improved livelihoods from grasslands; the case of Napier grass in smallholder dairy farms in Kenya
• Role of information and information providers in technology transfer
• Participatory research for smallholder livestock systems - applying common sense to complex problems
• The contribution of participatory research: on-farm research
• Computer-based forage management tools: historical, current, and future applications
• Paying for our keep: grasslands decision support in more-developed countries
• Decision support for grassland systems in developing countries

Index

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