Tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) is an important cool season forage plant that is not well suited to extreme heat, salts, or heavy metals. To develop transgenic tall fescue plants with enhanced tolerance to abiotic stress, we introduced a MsHsp23 gene expression vector construct through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Integration and expression of the transgene were confirmed by PCR, northern blot, and western blot analyses. Under normal growth conditions, there was no significant difference in the growth of the transgenic plants and the non-transgenic controls. However, when exposed to various stresses such as salt or arsenic, transgenic plants showed a significantly lower accumulation of hydrogen peroxide and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances than control plants. We speculate that the high levels of MsHsp23 proteins in the transgenic plants protect leaves from oxidative damage through chaperon and antioxidant activities. These results suggest that MsHsp23 confers abiotic stress tolerance in transgenic tall fescue and may be useful in developing stress tolerance in other crops. Compared with traditional plant breeding, genetic engineering provides a relatively fast and precise means of achieving improved stress tolerance of forage crops. Development of forage crops that are more tolerant to various abiotic stresses could lead to the use of more new lands for cultivation.

Italian Ryegrass is a high productivity and feed value, and an upright grass that behaves like a biennial or short-lived perennial. It grows vigorously in winter and early spring. Italian ryegrass and a related species, perennial ryegrass, Lolium perenne, are the two common weedy ryegrassses. Italian ryegrass and perennial ryegrass can hybridize, resulting in offspring that are difficult to identify as either species. Ryegrasses are cultivated for turf and forage. Sometimes Italian ryegrass is grown as cover crop. It has the potential to produce high yields and, with proper management, can be high quality with good animal performance. To develop of a high quality, productivity and early variety, 20 varieties examined growth and yield characteristics. The heading date of Green farm with high cold tolerance was on 28 April. Most of Introduced varieties except Grazer have mid and late heading date.

“Onnuri” is a new orchardgrass(Dactylis glomerata L.) variety developed by the National Institue of Animal Science (NIAS) in 2011. To develope the new variety of orchardgrass, 5 superior clones were selected and polycrossed for seed production. Agronomic growth characteristics and forage production of “Onnuri” were examined at Cheonan from 2009 to 2011, and regional trials were conducted in Cheonan, Pyungchang Jinzu and Jeju from 2009 to 2011, respectively. “Onnuri” showed medium type growth habit in fall and spring and medium in length of flag leaf and long upper internode. Plant height of “Onnuri” was more than 10cm that of standard variety, “Amba” and heading date was 5 days earlyer than 16th May compared to Amba. Characteristics such as waterlogging, disease resistance of “Onnuri” were stronger or better than those of Amba, specially “Onnuri” showed 18% higher dry matter yield (14,775kg/ha) compared to Amaba(12,523kg/ha). Nutritive value was appeared to be similar in both varieties.

Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) is one of important forage crop grass widely cultivated in Korea. Progress in breeding using conventional selection procedure is very slow, since Italian ryegrass is highly self-infertile. Biotechnological approaches, therefore, may contribute to the development of improved cultivars for forage crops. In an effort to optimize tissue culture responses of Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) for future genetic manipulations to improve forage characteristics, the effects of culture medium supplements on tissue culture responses were investigated with mature seeds of Korean Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) seven cultivars as explant tissues.

A new oat (Avena sativa L.) cultivar 'Darkhorse' was developed by Honam Agricultural Research Institute (HARI) m2005. It was released because ofits earlmess, high forage yield potential and adaptability for late summer sowing. It was devel-oped from the a

A new oat (Avena sativa L.) cultivar, "Highspeed" was developed by Honam Agricultural Research Institute (HARI) in2005. It was released because of its earliness, high forage yield potential, and good adaptability for late summer sowing. "High-speed" was s

This experiment was conducted to investigate the variation of nitrogen(N) uptake efficiency and their relationships withciency and partitioning parameters as physiological N use efficiency [PNUE], agronomic N use efficiency [ANUE], apparentrecovery [AR],